A history of Colour

The Original Reenactors Market

2011-11-21T20:10:00.000+01:00

We are just back and surfacing from TORM. I love going to this market - it's the first "big" market I ever did and it goes from strength to strength!

When I became a re enactor I quickly realized that this could turn out to be an expensive hobby (it doesn't HAVE to, but...) As the boys were young when we started I had to give myself something to do in a Living History situation, so I decided to become a 17th century embroideress. I learnt to spin and dye the threads I needed and was soon being asked where I got my embroidery silks, when I said I was making them myself I was asked if I would sell some. - Aha! Maybe this was a way of funding the hobby a little? I started trading at Sealed Knot events, made friends with many of the traders and was asked if I was going to be at TORM. "What's that?" I asked. "A market run by Anne Laverick" I was told.

I found the lady in question and after a very thorough interrogation about whether I could maintain a supply of goods, what else I could do and whether I intended to keep going, I was told I could have a corner in the Sports Hall at Blackbird Leys and she'd give me a go!

The market has been running now for 21 years, growing into and out of venues over the years, but seems settled at the Sports Connexion in Ryton on Dunsmore. For me it starts the "season" every year in March (the next one is the 16th, 17th and 18th March 2012), it used to end the season too, but that just seems to get extended nearer and nearer to Christmas!

It is well worth a visit if you ever get the chance - real artisans producing furniture, pottery, jewellery, clothing (from whatever period of history you fancy), arms and armour........etc, etc.

I am indebted to Anne for giving me that chance and for all the work that she puts into the organising, advertising and promoting of the market.
So I'd just like to end with - Thanks Anne!

A quick apology

2011-10-18T14:15:00.000+02:00

I feel I have abandoned the blog, twitter and facebook - and in a way I have! Whilst working away in August we had a phone call from our neighbour in France to tell us that we had had a burglary. We dashed home to find doors and shutters destroyed - whoever wanted to get into our house was not going to be stopped. The place was a mess and quite a lot has gone. Lots of really precious personal things - of course they have no value to anyone else.....but........

I have gone into a strange vacuum - I am reluctant to put anything on the web - where I am, what I am doing, anything really. The Gendarmes think that whoever it was had been watching the house to see when we were away - do they watch the websites too? Someone has been trying to hack into my facebook account.........

I will get back to writing, but for now I am licking my wounds, dealing with officialdom and re - assessing how things are publicised.

Hope you will forgive me!

Le Lot et La Laine

2011-07-17T22:48:00.000+02:00

Last weekend we travelled south to the beautiful countriside of the Lot. We were attending the new fibrey event of Le Lot et la Laine. We arrived on Friday afternoon ready to start putting up the tent and awning - it was soooooo hot, took far longer than we even imagined to get them up due to the number of breaks we had to take to drink more water!!!! However we managed and were ready on Saturday morning and raring to go!

The really interesting part for me was running some dyeing workshops - in French! I had 3 two hour workshops, 1 on Saturday afternoon and 2 on Sunday. I would like to thank all the students for being so patient with me - getting all the basics of natural dyes across in 2 hours is quite a feat, to do it in french and it be understood is amazing! Merci a tous!

It always intrigues me the artistic talent that you get on this type of course. All students get the same facilities and information and everyone produces something totally individual!

The location for the event was the Musée de Cuzals just outside a beautiful village called Sauliac sur Célé. The valley is stunning - full of high crags and caves with the houses built into the cliffs along the way. (guess what I forgot to take some photos!)

Having driven so far we gave ourselves a couple of days to see a bit of the area so didn't get back to the north until Wednesday. Now it's back to reality and getting ready for the next events!

Crikey! It's Giveaway time again.

2011-06-01T17:55:00.000+02:00

I can't believe it's the 1st June! Where has the time gone? Apart from the fact that we've been away working so much the time just seems to fly by!

So it's time for the Summer Giveaway. On the 21st June we will be drawing a name from the hat and for this season we have chosen Linen Laceweight (16/2) dyed in our own Walnut Husks! The hank size is 50g, more than enough to complete a scarf like mine.

The colour is quite a lush brown, and beautifully even, the linen has a lovely sheen to it, almost silk like! I adore working with this yarn - particularly for crochet, although it will knit up very well too. (Or if you're into historical textiles it's fabulous for finger braiding, lucetting and tablet weaving!)

We always have

a good supply of naturally dyed linens on the stall, 8/2, 16/2 and 28/2 are our standard thicknesses, all are available in 25g balls, the laceweight and 8/2 are also available in 50g hanks. (undyed can be purchased in 100g hanks) Take a look at the Event Calendar on the website to see where we will be next! To purchase online take a look at the Knitsisters website.

To be entered into the draw simply "follow" this blog, "like" us on Facebook or join our Group if you're on Ravelry.

Good luck!

ISEND 2011 part 2

2011-05-08T13:45:00.000+02:00

The International Symposium & Exhibition on Natural Dyes was held in La Rochelle, France from the 25th to 30th April. The organisers were Dominique Cardon (researcher and author) and Anne de la Sayette (Director CRITT Horticole).

Each day except Wednesday comprised of lectures in the morning followed by a 3 course lunch (with wine) then back to the lectures until 3.30pm. The market place opened at 3.30pm to both delegates and public, the delegates also had the option of attending various workshops and demonstrations until 6.30pm. On Wednesday there were a selection of excursions to choose from in the morning and then back to the lectures for the afternoon. Saturday the market place was open all day plus there were several excursions in the morning.

Lectures tended to be approximately 10 minutes, grouped into sessions, with a small amount of time allocated at the end for discussion and questions.

As I had taken a market stall I was unable to attend the workshops in the afternoon (or the lunches!), however many of them have been videoed and can be found here. Nor did I get the pretty screen printed bag or any of the paperwork, so only my own notes to go from!

I attended the "round table" on indigo with great anticipation, expecting there to be a good chance for discussion and looking forward to hearing the various lectures. The speakers were producers of woad or indigo and it was fascinating to hear their various production methods and their view of how they are taking their product into the future. Woad in particular seems to be looking forward with Woad Inc looking at the health benefits of the oil in the seeds - they have a range of bath/shower gels, soaps etc. Bleu de Lectoure on the other hand are looking at cosmetics and wood preservatives not to mention the blue corn starch plastics that are being experimented with for recyclable bags, bottles etc. Indigo production in Bangladesh is not a commercial enterprise in terms of specific cultivation - it is grown in any "free" space small areas of uncutivated ground - then collected together and harvested as a co operative. El Salvador have worked out a method of extracting more indigotin and more frequently from their Indigofera suffructiosa and it's organic! Such positive presentations really inspiring!

But what happened to the discussion?

The session leader - when the last speaker had finished - turned to them all and said "do you have any questions for each other?" The main topic was then the "purity" of the product (indigotin) and could it be standardised? What a waste of promising discussion time! When it finally was available to the floor it was very controlled!

Dreadfully done!

The week has left me with my head buzzing and many new contacts and friends made. It is taking a while to assimilate all the information that was available there, some good, some as described above very disappointing. The overall feel of the symposium seemed to be that it was for industrial scale producers rather than artisans, yet those producers were feeling that their audience were the wrong people!

I have to agree with India Flint about the industrial scale production of natural dyes - we are going to have to have a balance between growing food and growing other things - there are already many countries who cannot grow enough food let alone turn their land over to growing dyestuff. In which case we have to collect from the wild and then ...........!

The industrialists were also missing the point that many of the small artisans have had to deal with the same cutivation problems they are going through - and work out a method to get over it, more discussion and less controlling would have been beneficial!

Overall I had a fabulous week and enjoyed it very much, came home absolutely shattered, but VERY inspired!

ISEND 2011 part 1

2011-05-04T16:48:00.000+02:00

I do believe there have been some Bank Holiday days over the past week and half - oh and a wedding, but we didn't see any of it/them!!!!

On Easter Saturday we set

off for La Rochelle a 400+ mile journey through beautiful parts of France - Rouen, Le Mans, Angers, we did as little motorway driving as possible - not just to avoid the peage (we do try to be sensible with our money!!) - but we like to see the scenery! I'm so glad we did on this occasion, we fell in love with the Loir region (just above the Loire) and were surprised by the part of the Charente we saw - so flat! (Photo is of La Fleche, taken on the homeward journey)

La Rochelle is in the Charente Maritime, very pretty in the old town and round the Vieux Port, quite boring round the rest - the landscape was very flat and over all I guess I was disappointed with the area - so many people told me how lovely it was. As such a popular holiday destination I expected it to have more about it!

We camped! No posh hotel for us, just our trusty van as a bedroom and the Burgundian tent as out living quarters. To be fair it was very comfortable and the Municipal camp site at Port Neuf was fine (certainly not luxurious, but the water was hot enough to shower comfortably!!!) It was a half hour walk to the Vieux Port and about 40 minutes to Espace Encan - the venue for Isend. We walked everywhere, which was lovely, and got to spend time with friends old and new!

I attended ISEND 2011 as a trader only - a decision taken based on the price of attending. I was allowed to attend the lectures during the day, but not the workshops and demonstrations. Set up was on the Sunday, as was registration for all the delegates. I was delighted when Ulrike from the Online Guild came in soon after we'd started and introduced herself, then threw herself into helping with the set up! Thanks Ulrike!

Over the course of the week I got to see many of my old friends from DHA meetings, make contact with my "idols" like Dominique Cardon, Michelle Whipplinger, India Flint .... The biggest thrill of the week was probably talking to Michel Garcia about our water problem here, not long afterwards he appeared at the stall to say he'd take me through and give a demonstration of his indigo vat using sugar as a reducing agent - just me and the lady from El Salvador (whose name I have forgotten I am sorry to say!) He then gave full details of how the whole thing works, plus the chemistry. All the official delegates had had to scrabble for a bit of space round his demonstration, most unable to hear what he was saying .........

Maybe it wasn't so bad just being there as a trader!

(Part 2 - the conference)

The dreaded subject - Chemistry

2011-03-30T01:38:00.000+02:00

When I started writing this blog post I soon realized that it would be very, very long – I have pondered long and hard about whether it should go here or I should try and get it “in print” – it’s not until you start writing that you realize just how complex it all is to explain!!! For this reason I have decided to split the whole thing up into several posts.

For many people indigo is magic but they are simply dyeing with it for the experience rather than wanting to take it further, a simple dye kit or 1 day workshop is great and will satisfy their requirement. For others indigo “bites” and becomes such an integral part of their dyeing repertoire that they really need to understand everything that is happening in the bath and how works. Sadly very few seem to! If you are a professional dyer and particularly if you are writing a book it feels criminal to me that you cannot explain properly how the colour blue is obtained. One of the biggest insults (and reason behind starting all this writing) is when I read (or hear someone say) that it is “normal” for indigo to rub off.

Nooooooooo!

So here I am keeping my promise! I said I would lay my own neck on the line and give what I understand to be the chemistry going on in the “indigo” bath.-

Perhaps I should say here that I have no chemical training further than I took chemistry to A level way back in 1974 and failed it (well got an O level pass, but I already had the O level so......) From then until I took up natural dyeing the only links to the subject that I had were with the nutrition and food poisoning I had to study for my catering qualification. What I am trying to say is that this is a layman’s version, not a chemists!

I would like to start with clarifying names. Everyone talks about dyeing with “Indigo” but that is incorrect, the ACTUAL name of the blue dye chemical is INDIGOTIN (I don’t care how you pronounce it, but that’s how it’s spelt!) So throughout this ramble that is the term I will use when I am talking about the blue dyestuff. ( I feel that we would all get less confused if this term was used more often!)

I am not intending writing here how I use the dye but my understanding of what is chemically happening from the point at which you pick leaves from your chosen source plant and end up with a blue colour on your textile.

When doing a period demonstration dyeing with woad I start by saying::

“There is no blue dye in the leaves,- there is a “precursor” chemical and a naturally occurring chlostridia bacteria in there and when you tear the leaves up into little bits you release the chemical and bacteria into an environment they find suitable for the process of change to begin”

So let’s go through the best known of the plant sources and their “precursors” To clarify what I mean by this - there are many plants which contain a chemical within the leaves that can be converted into indigotin, the plants come from different countries, they are from different family groups and they contain a different chemical but ultimately they can make the required conversion.( I should perhaps also say that different methods of preparation can also be employed for the different plants.)

The Isatis family - Woads

It has not long been known that there is an Isatis family! This is currently under research - there seem to be more varieties than previously thought!

Isatis tinctoria (Woad)

Occurs in a wild state throughout Europe but is thought to originate in Russia. It was not native to England but was cultivated there as it was in Germany and Central Europe. It also can be found in Africa and Asia.

Isatis Tinctoria L. Var. Yezoensis (Ohwi)

Found in Korea, China and Japan growing wild on hillsides

Isatis Indigotica (Chinese Woad)

This plant has not been found in the wild, only as a cultivated plant.

There are 2 major precursors in Woads – isatan A and isatan B. Indican is also present, but in a very small quantity, so is only a minor precursor for this plant. isatan B and indican are both converted by the same enzymes however isatan A requires a different enzyme. There are other precursors also present but in much smaller quantities and they have yet to be named!

The indigofera family.

This is the most important and largest of indigotin producing families – it is also found in most parts of the world. There are approximately 700 species occurring in sub tropical conditions – so they can be found in the Americas, Asia and Africa. There are no native species in Europe or Australia The ones most commonly known are:

Indigofera tinctoria

this is sometimes called Indian Indigo Its origins are not known, but are assumed to come from India, although it can be found as far away as South America and Australia

Indigofera .suffruticosa

Found in Central and South America it has been cultivated in many tropical countries due to its high indican content.

Indigofera arrecta

Sometimes called Natal Indigo it is native to Africa particularly tropical Africa often at higher altitudes.It was introduced into Java and India.

Indigofera coerulea

Is found in Sub tropical Africa from Mali to Somalia, also found in Algeria through Arabia to India. This plant was cultivated in the drier area to which it is well suited.

The Indigofera plants all contain the colourless precursor chemical indican in the leaves. The indican content varies from species to species, in the age of the plant, the age of the leaves and even the time of year. For example there is more indican in the young leaves of an older plant that in the young leaves of a young plant, there can also be more in the top leaves of a plant than the bottom! The dye yield from Indigofera arrecta is higher than from any other of the Indigofera species.

Persicaria Tinctoria - Dyers Knotweed

Also known as Polygonum tinctorium it is a native of Vietnam and Southern China. It was introduced in to Japan in the 4th Century AD and became the main source of indigotin.

Again the precursor chemical found in this plants is indican

Around the world there are many more plants which contain precursor chemicals principally indican and they are used by natives of their country. For a more thorough breakdown of all the plants please refer to Natural Dyes by Dominique Cardon her book is by far the best breakdown of what is known at the present time of all the indigotin bearing plants (in my humble opinion!) .

Copyright © Debbie Bamford 25th March 2011

Giveaway Results and Knitsisters

2011-03-24T20:55:00.000+01:00

Home took a long time coming - I thought that I would get the giveaway result up on Sunday but packing down at the end of the market plus LD Lines cancelling our ferry - well actually they sailed off into the wide blue yonder leaving TranEuropa to pick up the pieces (from what we can gather), not very good customer service methinks! So my apologies for taking so long to get this up - the winner is Goddess Warrior who follows the group on Ravelry, my congratulations to her and as soon as I have the address the yarn will be on its way!

My other news is a fabulous new online shop started by my friend Heike in Ruthin - Knitsisters - I am very honoured to be one of the suppliers and hence a Knitsister! Heike is a beautiful knitter and an inspirational teacher of knitting and crochet. One of the things I miss about North Wales is going along to the knitting group started by Heike and Sian, not that I ever did much knitting.........!

Short and sweet, more news coming soon - I have lots of dyeing to do for the next couple of weeks ready for Wonderwool! Please go and take a look at Heike's shop - I'm sure you'll be inspired by something!

Spring Giveaway

2011-03-03T12:01:00.000+01:00

I can't believe it's March already and I haven't given details of the Spring Giveaway! The weather is making me feel it is already spring - glorious sunshine, the forsythia is almost out and the daffodils also almost there!

This time I'm actually going to do the draw a day early - that is on the 20th rather than the 21st. This is because I will be at the Original Reenactors Market for the weekend and so I can get someone to draw the name for me on the Sunday. I'll post the results hopefully straight away.

To enter the draw you need to follow this blog or "like" The Mulberry Dyer on Facebook and I am now going to include Ravelry members who join A colourful History group.

The Spring Giveaway is 100g of Pure Silk Boucle. This is a beautiful silk yarn, new to our collection and divine to knit or even crochet, has a beautiful drape for scarves and shawls, ideal for lacy items. The colourway is cochineal and indigo - very rich and lush as you can see! Retail price is £18 for 100g. Normal skein weight is 50g at £9.50.

There is no catch to our giveaway, it doesn't matter where in the World you are based if your name is drawn out of the hat I will ask you for your snail mail and the yarn will be posted out at no cost to you. I would ask merely that you tell your friends and yarny colleagues if you enjoy the yarn. It's a simple promotional excercise.

Having a Sale!

2011-02-28T00:46:00.000+01:00

We are gradually working our way through all the boxes of "stuff" and sorting out - and I found a box of oddments! They are odd hanks - end of dyelots or even hanks I thought I might try and make something from - however they are sitting there doing nothing, so I thought I'd have a sale!

There are some really pretty colours and could be combined to make something stripey or different, Mainly there are just single 50g hanks but some colours have more than one.

I have started listing them in the etsy shop under Sale Items - why not go and take a look at what's there?

There's more to add - so I'll keep them going up there over the next couple of days!

Hope you haven't forgotten the walnuts!

2011-02-23T20:41:00.000+01:00

Last Autumn I managed to collect some of the walnuts in their husks and put them to soak. Ethel Mairet recommends they soak for 12 months, however as I had a request for walnut dyed linen I thought I'd risk trying the "fresh" stuff out!

There were about 500g of the husks (many with their walnuts inside, it was easier at the time to just throw the whole thing in the pan to soak) the pan was filled with tap water a lid put on and then left under the bench to fester merrily. When I took the lid off they actually hadn't festered at all - no mould, no smell other than soggy walnut in fact I was quite impressed. I expect that they froze along with all the other dyebaths in December and January, but other than that they have been left to do their own thing.

I boiled them up and simmered them for about an hour, then left them to cool down overnight. Strained the liquor off and added 250g of mordanted linen plus 2 silk caps. Boiled and simmered again for about an hour and then left to cool. To me the yarn and caps look really dark an rich (picture left) , You can imagine how surprised I was to see how they dried! Not what I expected at all! Maybe Ethel has something in her idea of leaving them for 12 months! I have another pan soaking, which will definitely not be touched before October! (I should say that the very pale hank on the top of the pile was put into the exhaust liquor - so that was deliberate, it's the silk caps and hank underneath I thought would have stayed "chocolaty"!

What I also don't know of course is whether the water has had an effect on the walnut dyeing - it was tap water that was put in the pan, not rainwater.

Spring in the Air?

2011-02-18T21:40:00.000+01:00

I'm sorry to have abandoned the blog for so long - between a poorly computer and a holiday (yay!) I haven't managed to write about anything recently!

Today has been beautiful, the sun was so warm that we decided to have lunch outside, and then our afternoon cuppa....! I can't believe we have been here a year already!

We have done lots of things - like create a dyehouse and John's workshop (twice!), build stairs so there is a workroom above the dyehouse, build Mulberry Lodge. There's lots we still want to do obviously, but that is principally in the house to make it "ours". I have tried to keep tabs on what is growing in the garden over the year, it has been really interesting watching what was coming next, but this year I want to start making my own choices too!

At the moment the snowdrops are fabulous, the primroses have loved today's sunshine and the nettles and lady's bedstraw are definitely showing their faces. The biggest sign to me that spring is on its way though was the daisy just by the chair I was sitting on and the buds on the "unknown" tree out in the garden!

So onwards! Spring cleaning time is approaching and I have decided to try and keep this blog to dyeing and VERY related topics I have a separate blog for life in France and the Walnut House. There are lots of things that I want to write about both, so it seems a good time to split them up. I hope you think it's a sensible idea too!

Having a chemical breakfast

2011-01-18T11:11:00.000+01:00

Considering it's January there is a bit of excitement in the air! This morning I am linking up over skype with two friends to have a "chemical breakfast" It is 100 years ago today that Marie Curie won her nobel prize for chemistry. Women all around the world - well in 37 countries to be more precise are getting to gether and linking up to have a chemical moment in time. Australia has already kicked off and Indonesia.

Meetings are happening with networking sessions and discussions. Many people are using twitter to let others know what is happening. Prestatyn High School were linked up and the OU as well as a group in Prague - look up #IYC2011 or #chemhandshake to get an idea!

This is part of the International Year of Chemistry which is officially opened on the 28th January in Paris. I'm hoping to be running some workshops during the year for schools in support of this - I'll keep you posted!

Radio 4's Women's Hour is also doing a feature http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/bbc_radio_fourfm

Facing January!

2011-01-12T00:14:00.000+01:00

I hate this time of year! I try very hard not to - each year I try to think of good things to do in January but I never succeed in shaking off the "depression" of the long dank dark January.

BUT I am really enjoying having fires again! There is more than just warmth to them, they are cheerful and require a bit of excercise to keep them going!

We have a lovely log burner in the main lounge and a small "Godin" log burner in the fermette living room. We put the heating (oil fired) on in the morning for about an hour and a half. It's so nice to have a warm bathroom for a shower etc, then we light the Godin. For the rest of the day when not outside in workshops we are in the fermette near the Godin which is so lovely. At night we light the log burner in the lounge and sit and relax with books and the TV, the warmth is fantastic.

This has got me thinking - is it healthier to have fires than central heating? I certainly feel better - not snuffly and " heavy headed".! Today John and I were out moving logs and wood around under the skeleton barn so that the wood dries out etc, (I was also clearing up more Walnut leaves, buit that's another matter!) We started discussing the fact that when you have central heating you no longer think about the effort required to get the wood ready to burn, or take in by the fire etc, the excersise has got to be beneficial and being out in the fresh air even if it is cold! The effort is definitely paid off in the pleasure that goes with having a fire giving it's warmth and comfort.

Maybe this January is not going to be so bad...........!

Designing

2010-12-31T16:41:00.000+01:00

I'm hoping that everyone had a happy and peaceful, Christmas, ours was lovely spent with friends in Brussels. I have to say to residents of the UK if you think that the British way of dealing with snow is bad - try going to Brussels, they do NOTHING that I could see! No snow ploughs, no gritters, not a thing done to clear away the snow, it was left to the individuals to clear the path in front of their house and that was it! The roads were solid ice or snow and treacherous - no one was actually having problems though, buses were running but not brilliant, all the trams were running and cars were getting about (well maybe I should say sliding.....)

One of the things I am really aware of is that I never do anything with my yarns - I hate knitting, love crochetting, but haven't a clue how to write a pattern. How do you sell the yarns if there is nothing there for people to see? So I decided when I got back that I would do some designing!

A pair of mittens in Delice - the new 50% silk and 50% baby alpaca yarn, (dyed in pomegranate, cutch and madder extract exhausts, the colour is far more yellow than you would imagine from these dyes, but that's what went into the pan!) it's so lush and warm, these are perfect to keep your hands warm and not a bit "scratchy"!

I have obviously made them to fit me - fairly large hands but particularly long! Both mittens can be made from 1 50g hank of yarn. Of course the biggest challenge is yet to come - how do I write up the pattern?

If anyone would be prepared to be a tester for me please email and I'll send it out with a hank of the yarn -so far I have made "long hand" notes to tell myself what to do, but putting that into a readable pattern you can follow will be interesting!

Wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year, speak to you all in 2011!

Winter draw results

2010-12-22T21:54:00.000+01:00

The winner of the Winter draw is Ladka who follows this blog - if you would like to send me an email with your snail address, please, I will get your parcel in the post to you next week. Congratulations and thanks to everyone for joining in!

We are going to Brussels tomorrow for Christmas, back on the 27th. I'm hoping that it will have thawed out enough to get back into the dyehouse next week - I have lots I need to be getting on with! I also want to do some more walnut experiments as I have had some husks soaking since about September!

To pur you in the right frame of mind for the weekend here's what the walnut trees have been looking like all week - the squirrels have been thoroughly enjoying gambolling in the snow and hunting for missed fallen nuts!

Merry Christmas to everyone, hope it's good for you - wherever you are!

December Draw - Alpaca Silk Lace.

2010-12-07T20:48:00.000+01:00

Last month I had a phone call totally out of the blue from Yarn Forward Magazine. One of the patterns that they had received was using my alpaca silk lace yarn - could I let them have a hank to photograph. That was all I knew really. Whilst in Harrogate in the bleak snow we popped into W H Smith and found a copy of December's magazine - and look!

Here's the yarn looking stunningly beautiful as a scarf designed by Ruth Garcia - Alcantrud also known as Rock and Purl. It is gorgeous! Thank you Ruth very much for showing off the yarn like this! The first time that this has ever happened! I can't tell you what a thrill it was seeing the pages in the magazine!

In deference to this pattern the December givaway will be 2 hanks of alpaca silk lace in indigo "Cracked Ice" along with a copy of the magazine! The yarn is 80% superfine alpaca and 20% silk laceweight in 25g hanks. 350m per hank. The yarn is dyed in indigo - but I use a scrunching technique when the yarn is in the bath to get the multi shading of blues. As most of you know I like my colours to be very even normally, but after trying this technique on cloth to get a sample piece of multi colours I now use it quite often on the hanks so that the colour goes from small areas of very pale blue through to very dark.

If you already have a copy of the magazine and would like to knit the scarf in our yarn then please go to our etsy shop to find which colours are currently available.

New Yarns, New Show

2010-11-24T01:29:00.000+01:00

We are off to a new show this weekend in Harrogate - have no idea what it will be like as it clashes with the Knitting and Stitching Show, so most textiley people will probably go there - but maybe if they're doing a couple of days they'll consider coming to the showground for this one - Living North The essence of Christmas. We are going along with WiRE a networking and business support group for women. I have been a member for many years and I really appreciate the work they put in to get information and support for small businesses - I highly recommend membership and getting involved, they are always on the lookout for new events and lobbying MP's etc on women's behalf!

I LOVE silk - I started out spinning and dyeing silk to make embroidery threads, then I started buying in machine spun silk (and dyeing it!) in various thicknesses to suppliment my embroidery yarns. It didn't take me long to realize that the 20/2 mulberry silk that I was buying was perfect as a lace knitting yarn - so I started producing my Gunnister Style Purse Kits, (believe it or not this was at the end of the '90's!) so soon this yarn will be available to buy in lace weight hanks! I am adding to the silk knitting range with a beautiful boucle and also a multiple ply thread which is almost aran thickness - and very lush!

The other very special newbie yarn is a 50% baby alpaca and 50% silk DK weight yarn that is so delicious I've christened it Delice! A good friend and knitting designer is currently at work creating a pattern for the yarn but I'm sure when you've seen and squished it you'll be inspired to produce something yourself!

A Bit more and KHF

2010-11-04T22:05:00.000+01:00

Thanks very much for all the lovely comments - can't wait to get started and invite you all to come and run workshops etc!!! It's looking stunning here at the moment with all the autumn colours and is still OK temperature wise! (Not even had enough rain to fill my containers so I can try to do colour matching!)

I have the Mairie looking into the local "gites" and "chambres d'hotes" (sorry need a hat on the o but can't find one at the moment!!) so we know what the facilities are like and all being well there should be some accommodation available on site too!

Last year some very dear friends spent the winter in Portugal looking to buy some land and put log cabins there - they knew we had one already so the brought us back a present of these tiles - aren't they beautiful? We just have to use them as a logo for the workshops and courses I think!

They look fabulous in situ too!

On Saturday I am having an exciting and scary day! I am going to London on the Eurostar - day return from Calais, to attend the Knitting History Forum AGM and Conference. For my sins I am on the committee and also one of the speakers. That is the really scary bit - the other speakers are real heroes of mine - Susan North from the V and A, Philip Sykas from MMU and Dr Carol Christainssen from Shetland. Quite where I fit in I'm not sure, but if you're likely to be attending I think I would appreciate some moral support!!!!

The Knitting History Forum was set up to continue the work started by Montse Stanley and Kirstie Buckland in promoting the history and research into early knitting, we have had fabulous trips to the back rooms of the Museum of London and Ruddington Museum, if you do have any interest in knitting it's well worth joining!

Hope to see some friends there!

Mulberry Lodge

2010-10-26T00:28:00.000+02:00

When we were looking for a house in the UK we realized that having enough outbuildings could be an issue. So one January sale time we saw a sort of 2 story log cabin special offer and bought it thinking it could become an emergency dyehouse!

In January we started chopping down the pine trees in the courtyard, they were HUGE, frighteningly so, it was safest to remove them before there was a serious problem! It didn't take long to realize there was a perfect space for the log cabin - and it could have a special use of its own - for running workshops here!

So a few weeks ago with the aid of a friend John started building the cabin! It fills in a gap between the end of the house and the dyehouse, with space by the side to park the van, keeping the courtyard nice and tidy! (Wonder how long that will last?!) I even think I might put nice planters all round and grow some dye plants!

So here it is - Mulberry Lodge - all finished and awaiting water (hence the ditch), electricity is already installed and I have started moving in!

The plan is to run 2 workshops a year - one in May and one in October. What do you think? Will you come? We also hope to be able to get guest artists to come and run woerkshops for us too - but that takes time to sort out!

A lovely parcel

2010-10-09T15:05:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago we went over to the Haute Marne to visit some friends who live there. We set off really early in the morning and drove down via the N roads rather than the peages, the scenery was breathtaking and we really enjoyed the drive (just wish we could have had Vixy!!)

About 5 miles from where our friends lived we saw a Troubadour! I didn't know they still exist but sure enough he arrived in the village the next morning playing a tune and walking with his donkey and caravan. I have never seen such a well cared for and gleaming donkey (or caravan for that matter) It was so timeless! (His name by the way is Olivier d'Icarie)

Sue and Pete moved over about 5 years ago and have bought a lake (with another friend) that they have spent much time and effort in making into a holiday destination - with an eco slant - take a look at their site to see what I mean! It's beautiful and tranquil, we went up there for a picnic lunch and could have stayed all day!

Sue has been casting pewter for years and trades as Casts from the Past but she has now discovered something new to occupy her time - making glass beads. They are really beautiful - I had a go, but it's such a skilled thing to do and flames and me don't together either, scary burny stuff!!!

It occured to me that the beads would make fabulous stitch markers - really unique, so I asked if Sue would like to have a go at making some! She said she's think about it and see how it went, I've heard nothing..............

But - just look what arrived in the post today -

and there are lots more in all sorts of different colours and shades!

Quick update

2010-10-08T20:46:00.000+02:00

Tinsel has now been in touch and the Organic Merino will be winging its way to her home on Monday! Goody I'm glad that's worked out!

October already?

2010-10-08T16:45:00.000+02:00

We went to the UK at the end of September and it very quickly became not just October, but into the month - where does time go? I can't keep up! At least we are now here until the 5th November!!! So much to do though, you wouldn't believe the number of walnuts we have - before we went away I had a big box full and gave some away to a neighbour, I have already filled the wheelbarrow since we got home and there are as many again still on the ground! We missed lots of the husks - well they have gone brown already and I wanted to try out the green husks. Have to see what I can still rescue!

So what's news? We did some filming for a new BBC programme last week, can't say much about it at the moment - but I was very ill (have the photos to prove it!) my compliments to the make up artists!

On the 5th October we were working at the Clothmakers Hall in London - running a workshop for the students who were finalists in the SDC/Clariant International Design Competition and CSI Colour Award 2010. They came from all parts of the globe - South Africa, Australia, Hong Kong, Pakistan, India, Singapore, Ireland even the UK! All were incredibly talented and it was a priviledge to teach them something new! I am hoping that they are going away inspired to work with natural dyes in their future careers, I know 2 at least were keen!

I have had no contact at all from Tinsel - the Autumn giveaway winner, we are thinking that if there has been no contact by the 15th of this month I will draw again - the wool is sitting on my table neatly wrapped and waiting to be posted out, it's crying out for a new home!!!

On the subject of new I have a fabulous new yarn, can't wait to show it to you - so watch this space!

It's Autumn!

2010-09-22T11:10:00.000+02:00

A little later than I intended - should have been last night, but I had to go out to collect a friend from the TGV station in Calais.

Yesterday was the official first day of Autumn, a stunningly beautiful day here in France - and the day of our next giveaway! So once we got our friend home I made him put his hand in the hat and draw a name!

This month's hat (modelled here by doorstop Tigger) is a beautiful Tudor statute cap handfelted by a good friend called Rachel who trades as Crafty Beggars the fibre was dyed in madder by Helen Melvin and I love wearing it! (Most statute caps were knitted and had to be worn on Sundays by statute!)

There were lots more names in the hat this month, we included followers of the blog as well as facebook (some were folowing both, I think I spotted the doubling up, but some may have got away with it and had 2 entries!!)

So to the draw - Haydn was more than happy to oblige in pulling the name out of the hat

and the winner is:

TINSEL who follows the blog.

Many congratulations - I shall be in touch for your address shortly!

The next draw will be on the 21st December!

testing the water

2010-09-19T23:48:00.000+02:00

We were back in the UK again last weekend working so I decided to let the water try and clear itself (some hope!) The obvious thing to start doing is testing the water we have available. We already know that we have hard water so have jug carbon filters in the house, for our drinking water, there's one option to try, we collect rain water in butts, there's another and then we can spend lots of money buying de mineralised from the supermarket. I have always used the demineralised for extracting the colour, but there are too many parts to the dyeing process to buy it all, we need a viable solution!

Although I think there may come a time where I have to have the water analysed properly, over the last couple of days I've done the following tests.
I had a 100g hank of merino lace that I mordanted before I left North Wales (lovely soft water), so I split it down into small hanks of the same size and soaked them out in de mineralised water. (We had an analysis of the water from Dwr Cymru quite a while ago so that was the most neutral I could think of in a hurry!) I put 10g ground cochineal into 500ml demineralised water and left it to soak overnight. Next day I heated to boiling and simmered for half an hour then left it to cool. There was some evaporation so I split off 4 x 50ml liquid into separate tubs.

Into a stainless steel pan I put the first 50ml and added 1/2 pt demineralised water, added 1 small hank wool and heated to boiling, held there for 5 mins then allowed to cool enough to handle. Removed hank and poured the liquid back into its tub. The pan and jug were washed out with demineralised water between each sample and the same method was used for each type of water. I tried filtered tap water, tap water and rain water that I passed through a filter paper to remove any solid particles.(this picture is the tap water sample)

Observations:

Demineralised water stayed a beautiful clear red all through the experiment as did the rain water.

The tap water and carbon filtered tap water immediately went "gloupy" as soon as they were added to the cochineal liquid in the pan - you can see the "sludge" in the tub at the bottom.

filtered water went gloupy in the same way as tap water

Rain water was clear and red, although slightly brighter than the distilled, I would say that the colour shows that the water is slightly acidic (I tested with litmus afterwards)

Looking at the samples you can see that the tap water and filtered water are "patchy" with dull bits and OK bits, this would imply that there is some iron contamination there, the rainwater and de mineralised water are both good clear reds. It;s not very obvious but the rain water is slightly brighter - more scarlet (think that's my lack of photography knowledge!)

Clearly a carbon filter is not going to be solution enough! I need to find out what has been added to the water and then see if there is a filter that can clear it, what I really want to do (and have for quite a while) is rainwater harvesting for which we will need to get HUGE storage tanks to be able to store enough!

I mordanted 3kg of the merino whilst the water was really bad, so now I need to know whether I've ruined it or it can be salvedged with other dyes. The next tests are going to be with weld and the mordanted yarn to see if I get my normal yellows, and I'd better do some lightfastness testing too, to see how that's affected.

I know I want to spend more time in the dyehouse - but I didn't think it would be like this!

Problem Water

2010-09-07T23:50:00.000+02:00

I have a commission I'm working on at the moment - I was hoping to be putting a lovely report here about it, however instead I am reporting a problem that at the moment I haven't a clue how to deal with!

I need to use cochineal to get the shade of red I'm looking for, I know it doesn't like hard water - but even with soft water in N Wales I had got into the habit of starting with de - ionised water, then adding that to the main bath.

I started sampling for this commission when I was still in Wales, so the colour I have to match was dyed there - I have already done some cochineal dyeing with the hard water we have here - so know I can get good red! The photo shows some wool I dyed just a few weeks ago, although I wasn't trying to colour match with this particular hank!

So to my problem! Last week the water went off - the whole village was turned off and no one had any water coming into their house for about an hour. After it had been turned back on a note came round from the Commune to say that we must not drink the water, couldn't even use it to clean our teeth. It must be treated with "Javel" (bleach) at a certain percentage before consumption. This state lasted for a few days and then a couple of days ago we got the all clear. I have been doing my preparation work over the past few days - the scouring, mordanting and rinsing. Now I'm not sure if even the mordanting has worked properly.

The cochineal itself I did my usual method of soaking out in de ionised water, heated to boiling and then allowed to cool, I wanted as much colour as possible from this dyebath! The colour at this point looks rich and red, seems a good colour to me!

Yesterday I filled the big dyebath with tap water and then added in the cochineal. Horror - the bath went black! Then the cochineal precipitated out, I've never seen anything like it! It's horrid! It smells like a cochineal bath, but there the similarity ends!

This morning it looked gloupy and thick and black! I took a small amount out into a pan and added a small hank of wool and a small piece of cotton ribbon, heated them to boiling to see if there was any "dyeing" power in the bath at all - this is the result. A bit of "purple" maybe but I'm not a happy bunny! I wonder if they could have added more bleach - in the form of ammonia, rather than chlorine but I really have no idea what they have done to my water!!!

I have now made lots of small hanks of the same wool but from some I had mordanted before, so I can do some experimenting! I will wet out in de - ionised water and then try making a small dyebath with filtered water, try other dyestuffs with the tap water - try anything to make it work!

It's not good for a dyer to have problems with the water like this!

Being Silly!

2010-09-06T00:51:00.000+02:00

I am currently working on a commission - which I will tell you about soon, but as we're home and the weather is good we have also been trying to get some work done in the courtyard. We had very large pine trees growing just by the side of the house - quite scary really, they were HUGE as you can see from this picture!

When we started moving over in January a tree surgeon cut down several of them, but there was one left. John has been wanting to get rid since January and finally took the plunge - set up the scafolding tower and started with the chain saw!
Not only did it have to come down - but of course we had to clear up as well so the chain saw had lots of work for several days - we now have a good stack of firewood drying for the winter and had the compulsory conflagration to get rid of all the small bits.

Whilst doing all the clearing up John managed to create a stunning sculpture for us, I hope you all think it's as good as I do - maybe we should get it entered in the Tate Modern?!

He's called it Bramble!

Autumn Giveaway

2010-08-30T12:06:00.000+02:00

Organic Merino Aran

Goodness the summer has vanished - and it feels like it too from the drop in temperature and amount of rain that is falling (well here in Northern France at least!).

a closer view - isn't it soft and squidgy looking?

We started the giveaway in June with the Summer Organic Cotton Boucle (colour still to be chosen - Sarah!). For the Autumn we though we'd offer something warm and comforting! Our choice this time is 3 x 100g hanks of Organic Merino Aran weight yarn. The Merino is not a British yarn, but is pure Merino and beautifully soft and warm. Organically certified and processed the dyer still refuses to go through the hoops!!! We are offereing 300g of the yarn which should be plenty for a hat and scarf to keep the Autumn winds at bay - try looking at Woolly Wormhead's site for some fab hat patterns, I have a scarf pattern that I will include with the yarn! The recommended needle size for the yarn is 4mm and the approximate hank length is 150m.

We have decided that as not everyone wants to join facebook we will also include followers of this blog, if you do NOT wish to be included in the draw please drop me an email and I will miss your name out!

Hope you like our choice of colour - it is Logwood and Lac, the yarn is handpainted and there is our usual guarrantee that if you find any problem with the dye in terms of rub off whilst knitting up then you are entitled to a replacement yarn.

Good luck to all!

Home Sweet Home!

2010-08-26T20:53:00.003+02:00

We got back home at 9.30 on Tuesday morning - we set off at 9am on Monday morning from Lanark in Scotland.

The day was very loooooooooooong! We included a trip to New Lanark Mill to buy some wool (which I will be dyeing in the near future!) The place is fascinating and they had mules for spinning the wool, they even knew what the difference was with Asa Lees's mule (something important to me as my Grandfather used to lecture on the subject of Asa Lees's Mule!!!) Then a stop to see my sons' near Haydock Park, then called on John's Dad who's just back from hospital, then down to the port. The ferry was at 5am so we had to check in at 4am then sit on the ferry and hve a snooze, add an hour for the fact we are now in France drive for 1 and a half hours and here we are at home!!! It has taken me 2 days to catch up on my sleep and clean up the house a bit - as we are away so much over the summer it is impossible to keep on top of everything! (That's my usual excuse!!)

You didn't really need to know all that - but I will write a proper post later, I have lots of things to tell!

Alpaca Sock yarn

2010-08-05T19:55:00.013+02:00

Today has been quite efficient - well for me! I mastered getting my flickr account linked to my Ravelry profile, which seemed quite a challenge at the time, but ended up being quite simple (one day I guess it will all seem less frightening!)

I also managed to get some alpaca sock yarn hanked up ready for the Knit Camp next week - still lots to do, but I thought I'd let you have a preview of the colours now!
The names of the yarns will as usual be the dyes that have coloured them and I can assure you that any that include indigo will have no rub off, I offer an immediate exchange if there is any problem with yarns that have been dyed with indigo and leave blue on your hands when knitting (or crocheting or..) and of course if you want to pre-order............!
I have an exclusive pattern for this yarn designed by Cecilia Hew ett who is a member of the Woolclip and also one of the organisers of Woolfest, the pattern is fab and I'm told it's quite simple to do (no I haven't tried it yet, I have a thing about knitting!)

What I can tell you is that it is lovely to crochet with - I have dseigned a cover for my iPhone, very simple, but works a treat! The back has a pouch to hold the cable or earphones and the phone fits snugly inside! The yarn is so soft and non scratchy it even cleans the face of the phone getting it in and out!

Embroidery Silks

2010-08-04T19:22:00.005+02:00

A couple of years ago I had a commission from the National Museum of Wales to dye embroidery silks suitable for reproducing an altar frontal. After much sampling and deliberation we came to the conclusion that our 3 ply filament silk in single ply would be ideal.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the altar frontal, but at the International Medieval Congress a friend and fellow trader brought the purse she had embroidered to show me! Tanya's work is stunning as you can see, the pictures show the 2 sides of the purse.

Tanya is a storyteller and textile worker, her table braid is famous in re enactment circles and she has started producing complete cushion kits to embroider for the "modern" world!

Bradford Workshop and Fun Day

2010-07-26T23:56:00.011+02:00

I have dicovered just how difficult a month away working can be without a base! It has been very hard to keep up with everything we needed to do with nothing other than a van and the generosity of friends! I have really missed writing here and keeping things up to date!

The time, to be fair, has flown by - mainly because we have had so many events to attend. Two that really stood out were spent at the Cartwright Hall Museum and Art Gallery in Bradford.
As part of the 2012 fund raising initiative they had an exhibition titled "Precious Cargoes" which inspired much interest in "Turkey Red" the special technique for dyeing a madder red onto cotton cloth. Within the exhibition were several sample books showing off the colour in various patterns and some beautiful finished articles.

Our first day there was to run a workshop. Taking Turkey Red as a theme we decided to try an experiment with some cotton cloth. I mordanted 1 piece with aluminium acetate and another piece (of the same cloth) had the complete preparation including sheep pooh, oiling, drying, alum, tannin, etc, leaving the madder dyebath for the students to carry out. (A 1 day workshop really doesn't allow for the 6 weeks preparation time!)

The cloth goes into "room temperature" dye for half an hour and has to be continuously moved in the liquid for the whole time - we got a volounteer to start us off, amazing how the colour is obvious right from the start even "cold"! The temperature was then raised, but no higher than 70 degrees - both pieces of cloth went in together, but the colour difference was obvious straight away!

This photo shows the cloth after it has been dried - what really stands out to me is not just the difference in the colour , but how even the "Turkey Red" looks in comparison to the other. You really would not believe these 2 pieces of cloth have been dyed in the same bath!

(I should point out that there is 1 process missing on this cloth - the brightening - we didn't have the time or facilities to do that at the workshop, so I really need to do that at home when I get chance)

Continuing with the theme of "Precious Cargoes" we also used logwood, indigo and fustic, so an interesting range of colours was obtained overall - the madder was used for other yarns after the cotton came out too! We even managed a modification or two!

The second day was a drop in "Fun Day" for all the family with children young and old coming in and playing with natural dyes (We normally say from toddler to 80 everyone is welcome to play!) They all got to take home a picture they had painted with extract dyes, we had a microwave with us to help set them but the key thing was to see the dyes in use and enjoy yourself!

Hopefully a new generation will be inspired to go into the dye house when they grow up!

(Please excuse my not giving a full breakdown of the Turkey Red process I used, I am currently doing research on the subject and ultimately hope to publish my results as an article)

My thanks to Janet Simmonds from Bradford Museums and Galleries and Joan Russell Photography for allowing me to use their photographs.

And the winner is............

2010-06-21T22:23:00.006+02:00

So the last few days have flown by and today is the 21st June - the REAL first day of Summer (well that was what I was taught in my youth!).

It was also a very important day for the business - the first seasonal draw was today! At 5pm this afternoon I wrote out all the names of the people following us on Facebook (plus 2 people who read the blog post, but don't do facebook)

The names were folded up and put into a hat, John's Victorian hat for this draw, then Alien Life Form Random Extracted Draw - Alfred - actually the young son of friends we are staying with, obliged by getting the paper from the hat.................

And the name is......................................

Sarah who reads the blog but isn't on Facebook!!

I shall be in touch shortly to arrange which colourway you would like - or your commission colour!

Organic Cotton Boucle Yarn

2010-06-11T08:59:00.007+02:00

Although I am probably one of the longest established commercial natural dyers, certainly in the UK (I started producing handspun, naturally dyed embroidery silks for reenactors back in the early '90's) I am really conscious that my yarns aren't well known or on my website properly. This stems from the fact that I don't know how to photo them and show them to their best advantage, also the colours will show up differently on everyone's screens and I don't want people to be disappointed when they get a colour that wasn't what they thought it would be. (well it's the computer manipulation I have a problem with, not the taking the picture!)

Unless you've seen our stall you won't know what our yarns are like!

So to try and introduce the different yarns to a wider audience we have decided to do a seasonal giveaway! On the 21st of June, September, December and March (the old start to the next season) we will be doing a draw for someone to win a quantity of one of our yarns.

If you follow us on Facebook then your name will be put into a hat (I have many from different periods!) to win whichever is the choice of yarn for that season. (Should you prefer NOT to be entered into the draw then please send me an email and I will take you out!)

So - for the Summer Giveaway we are choosing a cool yarn - 500g of

Organic Cotton Boucle from our Morus Organic range.

The yarn itself is organic cotton from Peru, the processing is organically certified, the dyes used are either organically certified or approved by GOTS, it's just the dyer who won't go through the hoops required (well actually I have higher standards and environmental issues with organic status!) The price per 100g hank is £15 so that's £75 worth of yarn I'm giving away for the first season!

The recommended needle sizes for this yarn are 4.5mm - 5.5mm with a tension square of 14 stitches and 24 rows to 10cm over stocking stitch. For suggested reading try the Wandering Spirits pattern book by Jean Moss.

The winner will be notified through the facebook page and can either choose to have the yarn commsission dyed (a colour within reason please!) or select a colour that is currently available from stock. As we are attending Woolfest at the end of June then should the winner choose to select from stock they can make a personal choice from there if appropriate.

We hope you will approve of this method of introducing our yarns and over the next month or so we hope to have an Etsy shop up and running, specifically for the yarns!

Walnut Catkins

2010-05-31T21:47:00.008+02:00

The walnuts just seem to be going on - I said this would be a recurring theme for the year! The catkins have fallen with a vengeance - there is a huge carpet of them all around the trees, but I collected about a kilo to experiment with.

The first thing I noticed was that although they looked very green as they were falling, they quickly oxided to a browny black. I was a bit concerned that this would affect the colour as Ethel Mairet is so adamant the with the husks they must be green, however the only way I could avoid them going brown would be to collect them before they fell - I may try that next year, but certainly for this year want to see what the crop is like and what happens at each stage.

I always do the same thing when experimenting ( unless I have read something specific like need to soak in alcohol) it gives me a good overview of how a dye works. So to start with I soaked them in cold water for a couple of days. As it was so hot and sunny last
week they actually started to ferment a little, getting "frothy" at the edges of the pan. Then I brought them up to the boil and simmered for about an hour. I let them cool down and "rest" overnight. They were then strained and the fibres added, heated to simmering and kept there for an hour. After cooling to hand hot the fibres were rinsed and put out to dry. (You can see the colour of the dye liquid underneath the collander in the pan.)

I am really impressed with the colour - it's more golden than it looks in the picture, really quite lush! I will certainly be collecting them again next year and using lots of them. I dyed a kilo of "Blarty" with them and then a T shirt and then a 300g hank of wool. The exhausts were quite pale, but very pretty!

I am now scrabbling round collecting the little nuts that have fallen in the wind over the weekend - waste not want not!!!

More on Walnuts

2010-05-27T22:09:00.009+02:00

I must have been feeling particularly thick the other day when I said some catkins had fallen in the wind. Catkins are falling at a rate of knots, it's like a carpet all round the trees. Where they have fallen from there is now the nut forming between the leaves, so many of them I'm beginning to think I'd better do some pickling as well as dyeing!

I've been re-reading Ethel Mairet, who says that walnut husks have to be used green - once they have oxidised to brown it is too late and they won't dye properly. This got me thinking - if we can "reduce" indigo with thiourea dioxide why don't I try it with the brown walnut husks to see what happens.

I tried 3 different methods.

Method A

100g walnut husks were put into 50 degree water and soaked overnight. The next day the liquid was heated to boiling and they were simmered for an hour. Then allowed to cool overnight. The next day the husks were strained out and 100g pre mordanted Blarty fleece was added to the pan (I didn't have any scoured that wasn't pre mordanted otherwise I would have used that) The pan was heated to boiling again and simmered for 1 hour. Allowed to cool and the fleece removed, rinsed and put out to dry.

Method B

100g walnut husks were added to 50 degree water plus 1 tsp thiourea dioxide. A lid put on and the husks left to soak overnight (I checked the colour of the liquid both night and morning and there was no difference) The husks were then heated to boiling, simmered for 1 hour and then left to cool overnight. The next day strained and 100g pre mordanted Blarty fleece added, heated again and the rest of the experiment as for A.

Method C

100g walnut husks put into 50 degree water and left to soak overnight, the next day heated to boiling and simmered for 1 hour. Allowed to cool overnight. The next day they were strained out and the liquid heated back to 50 degrees, 1 tsp thiourea dioxide added and left to "reduce" for 2 hours. 100g pre mordanted Blarty fleece added and left to soak in the liquid overnight - I did not heat again with this fleece, it was left in teh air for 1 hour to see if anything happened, then rinsed and left to dry.

There are definitely differences between the three lots of fibre in terms of the colour produced. Method A is a more "orangy" brown, method B is what I would describe as a "truer" brown, method C is fawny. I think that method C has lost out on the extra heating so there is less uptake of the dyestuff - of the 3 methods I would try B again to see what happens in larger quantities.

I am particularly interested in experimenting with the fresh husks now though - to see if I can get them whilst they are green rather than turning brown.

Walnuts

2010-05-16T23:11:00.005+02:00

I mentioned briefly that we have 2 Walnut trees growing in the garden and that I want to do some experiments. I'm actually very excited about the trees - I've only ever got pale fawns from the dried husks that you can buy - unless I add iron or copper as a modifier. In fact I am more likely to choose Cutch than Walnut if I want to produce a brown. It's actually very frustrating, because the bath is always a really rich, thick brown colour and whatever is being dyed looks gorgeous until you squeeze it out! Anyway this is going to be the first of probably many reports throughout the next year on the experiments and their progress.

So to start - here are the 2 trees. One has leaves and catkins, the other only buds and the beginnings of catkins. From these I would say they are both Juglans Regia, which originated in Asia Minor, but long ago became naturalised to to temperate climates of Europe. The king of trees, they were highly valued by the Romans - Pliny gives a recipe for dyeing hair to stop it going white and the use of fermented husks is recorded in the early days of dyeing in Persia. (Juglans Nigra or Black Walnut is originally from Central and Eastern America, also quite common in Europe as well now but obviously from a much more recent date)

This image shows the catkins and leaves quite clearly. According to John and Margaret Cannon the catkins can be used to dye I wasn't going to take any this year thought that that would be a later experiment, however it's been pretty windy today and several have been blown down, so I've collected them and will try them during the week.(I only thought the leaves and husks were used, but the roots also get included to get darker colours, they're collected before the sap begins to rise).

I have dyed with dried leaves and had some really lovely results - research so far recommends collecting in early summer, so I'll try some fresh leaves in July. The walnuts themselves may be quite a lengthy process. The recommendations seem to be that they are collected when green, covered with water and a lid to keep them from oxidizing and then stored for - some say 1 year others 2.

As I do the experiments I will give my sources and results. According to Cardon the most common colour obtained from walnuts on their own is fawn, it would seem that you have to combine with madder or indigo to get darker colours, I'm hoping to try as many different methods as I can to build up a good knowledge of their potential.

Pictures

2010-05-13T20:15:00.007+02:00

Back in 1988 my father commissioned a picture, which I have always loved. It's a sea battle - the action between the "Java and Constitution" one of the famous battles from the War of 1812. Constitution won - she's in Boston harbour to this day. (painted by D MacLeod, of St Ives, Cornwall)

I can spend hours staring at the picture (my photo does not do it justice, it isn't a light shining on it in the middle that's the cannon fire!) - the sea has so much movement and there are different nuances depending on the time of day or the light around it. I have always preferred pictures that are almost a photograph, I can't deal with distortions or "fuzziness". That doesn't mean I can't appreciate a skill or talent - it's just not what I want to look at on my wall. Oh and yes that is Tigger you can see under the picture - he's a phone - if you look around the rest of the lounge you may see one or two more

Back in the early '90's I joined a renenactment group and decided that my "character" would be a 17th Century embroideress, so I enrolled at the local college to do the City and Guilds in Embroidery. Well so I thought; I had to do "Art and Design" as the full title tells you (I somehow missed that when I enrolled!) After nearly walking out there and then because I am not artistic (I was told at the age of 14 that I MUST drop art as I was useless at it and I took that to heart as you do at that age!) the lecturer persuaded me that it was worth persevering for a few weeks and I have to say that she was FANTASTIC in her encouragement and enthusiasm, (her name was Gail Jones, she was a weaver and ultimately a miliner with her mother, but where she is now I have no idea!) so continue I did and even completed the course and came out with the full qualification, a knowledge of how to produce design boards and how to turn a design or small picture into a textile that I actually like! (How else could I have made the flags last year?!) In case you're interested here's one of my pieces:

The reason I am rambling about all this is, on the course I met a lady called Helen Melvin who is incredibly artistic. We became good friends, amongst the various finished pieces we had to produce for the course Helen made a felted picture - a Waterfall (I'm not sure if it was her first picture, but I'm pretty sure it was her first Waterfall), I fell in love with it and used to sit and gaze at it on the wall at her house, but could never afford to buy it (I didn't really think she wanted to sell, but eventually a member of her family managed to prise it off her wall!) When I knew I was moving away I asked Helen to create another Waterfall - for me, my very own commission! Personally I think they are a speciality, she produced Waterfall 3 which has now moved over to France. (Helen talks about the picture on her blog here ) It's not reached my wall yet, it has pride of place on the settee in the lounge where I can admire it anytime I want to, I'm trying to work out where the best place is to get the full benefit!

Thanks Helen - I love it!

Wonderwool and beyond

2010-04-28T20:41:00.002+02:00

I had to come to North Wales after Wonderwool - dental appointments and things to sort still. As it turns out our Fourtrak has a broken clutch cable and is in the garage and I have to stay here until next Tuesday to have stitches out in my mouth!

Plans always seem to have to change at the moment - but we're getting there! I am writing this, just to say sorry I won't be home to post any news over the weekend and how great to see people at Wonderwool! We had a great time and caught up with lots of people we haven't seen in ages. Thanks to everyone that dropped by the stall it was a fun weekend!

We will be heading back to France next Wednesday so hopefully more news after I get back, we are supposed to be at home for all of May, hopefully I'll have the dyehouse and cloth house sorted by the end of the month and will have lots of time to experiment. I may be stuck here, but plans and ideas are forming!

Hanks are ready - not sure about me!

2010-04-21T22:48:00.002+02:00

Well the hanks are ready to box, they are all labelled now! I still feel as though there is sooooo much to do - and we catch the ferry today!

Just to add to the event I am now working in Tamworth on Saturday - a Medieval Caligrapher will be my role there, so I will be driving off from the B & B in Builth Wells at about 6am leaving John to run the stall on his own again! At least I will be there on the Sunday to catch up with everyone!

A quick preview then:

Getting ready for Wonderwool

2010-04-19T18:46:00.007+02:00

I can't believe how quickly all these events are coming up - we were supposed to move in January and have February to get the dyehouse ready for action and start getting stock ready. That all went wrong then!!

But we are getting better nad I am now starting to use the dyehouse. There is cold and hot water via hosepipes and the grass is benefitting from any waste water at the moment - but I am very careful about waste water - anyone that knows my methods knows that I try to never throw a dyebath away, or a mordant bath! It's one of the reasons that I stopped going through the assessment process for becoming Organically Certified, I had to make the choice between being an organic dyer and not putting anything other than organically certified yarn through my dyebaths; or an environmentally conscious one who re - used everything wherever possible and didn't waste water cleaning everything down to start organic dyeing, etc, etc.

The environment won out!

(Sadly I am now very sceptical abou the value of the term organic - other than the traceability of the product, but I do value it for that, hence my organic range of yarns which are of course dyed with the environment in mind!!!!!!)

Anyway I did not mean to get into a rant - this was just to show you that I really am dyeing again - so here's some pretty pictures! Many of these hanks are Organic Merino - aran or DK weight, there's also alpaca sock and linens. Next time you see them they will be in small hanks ready to be sold!

Gardening

2010-04-15T20:12:00.011+02:00

I am not a gardener - I usually kill things off, so steer clear of anything that requires looking after, however having bought this property I feel I have a duty to keep it looking nice!

You may have noticed in the photo yesterday that the Hydrangeas needed dead heading - I don't know the first thing about looking after them, but looking through the gardening books I have here (I used to love Geoff Hamilton and have several of his books) and searching on the internet, it would seem that you have to wait for the first buds to appear and then cut the old heads off at the first bud. Of course I'm a little late, but boy do they look better!

When I bought a house years ago (when I was first married) I was advised that you shouldn't plant things in the first year, you should watch the garden through the seasons to see what is actually there. I am trying to do this, but of course leaving North Wales in January I had no idea whether there would be Snowdrops or Dafodils ..... so thought I should dig some up to bring with me!

I now know that I am in the right house - it was truly meant to be! There has been a beautiful carpet of Snowdrops throughout February and March, now into April there are Primroses and the lovely double headed Dafodils that are my absolute favorites.

Something I have always wanted in a garden is Lily of the Valley - I LOVE it and guess what - there are loads of tiny little buds coming up all round the front garden!

As for dye plants I've already said that the Walnut trees sold the property to me, but there are other things coming up that I recognise - a dyers garden wouldn't be the same without...................................................

What will come up next I wonder?

A lovely day!

2010-04-13T21:38:00.006+02:00

Today has been a lovely day - in more ways than one!

The weather has been gorgeous - lunch was under the Walnut trees in the coutyard, I only needed a T shirt on for most of the afternoon (and my trousers of course!!!) But the big thing was I was working in my dyehouse!
John has done a temporary fix for water and drainage, so I was able to get out and make a start on getting some yarns ready for Wonderwool next week. I know this is very last minute, but we were working in Pontoise (near Paris) over the weekend at an historical market and I need to re - stock!!

Something I'm really excited about here is the walnut trees - I have always had to buy in walnut husks in the past and have never managed to achieve the really good colours I know you can get with them - so I can't wait to get
experimenting! They haven't even got leaves on yet and I'm planning what I want to do!

I wonder if you can dye with hydrangeas?

The complete guide to natural dyeing, by Eva Lambert and Tracy Kendall

2010-03-08T20:57:00.009+01:00

Having read Jenny Dean's recommendation on her blog I ordered "The complete Guide to Natural Dyeing. Techniques and recipes for dyeing fabrics, yarns and fibres at home" by Eva Lambert and Tracy Kendall

Although I have never met Eva Lambert I know her work as we both were involved in the "Great Bed of Ware" project part of the V & A Millenium Exhibition back in 2000 (along with Simon Chadwick from Styal Mill - Eva dyed all the madder yarn for the hangings, Simon the yellows, my role was all the blackwork silks for the pillowcases and the green silk for the quilt. I also made all the tassels.) Tracy Kendall I don't remember meeting - although I did attend the MEDATs conference in Reading where Jenny says they met.

The book is very bright and the pages are very inspirational with all the colours and sections. Images are very clear, particularly when part of the instructions.

As with cooks, experienced dyers will develop their own prefered methods, be it for mordanting or dyeing, this can be because of the type of water they have or their most commonly used dyestuff and their own affinity to it, so as Jenny herself says the mordanting methods described are different to my own, but in some cases I will give them a try and see if they make a difference, it is after all how we learn! I would describe some of her mordants as modifiers as they are for altering the colour rather than fixing it, but that is terminology.

I laughed when I read some of the problems that you come across when dyeing fabric as opposed to yarn - they are so true, but the description of how to deal with them was a little confusing For example "fabrics in water are much more inclined to trap air in some areas ........can also be inclined to fold and bunch up when under the water, making it harder to mordant them fully and evenly" I totally agree! The fabric as it goes into the bath will automatically stick to itself (particularly silk, but all of them do it) and the folds will then hold air, the solution is "stir the fabrics frequently when they are being treated" if I did this with 6 metres of cloth 60" wide surely the folds and bunching would increase with frequent stirring?

A good test of somone's understanding of the chemistry of dyeing is to read the indigo/woad instructions. The opening paragraph of this section begins differently to most "there are at least 40 different varieties of indigo plants in the pea family that contain the chemical 'indican', which is what colours the fibres. Woad, although of the cabbage family, has indican - but the resulting blues are not as intense as those from indigo" Firstly I suggest they read the web page of Chris Cooksey which is simple but shows the chemicals that pre cursor "indigotin" in indigo plants and woad plants. Indigotin by the way is the chemical that colours things blue, not indican which is the precursor. As far as I can see understanding the chemistry of what is going on in the "indigotin" dyebath influences whether you get a good colour and fix or not. The best practical book that I know gives a true understanding and really good recipes is The colour of Sea and Sky The art of Indigo Dyeing by Helen Melvin. I think I'm going to have to lay my own neck on the line very soon and do my version of the chemistry - then everyone can slate me if they don't think it's correct!

I would recommend this book although I think the title is a little misleading too - as a complete guide it doesn't come anywhere near Dominique Cardon's Natural Dyes! My first "how to" book was Jenny Dean's The Craft of Natural Dyeing, and I've never looked back - if newcomers can say the same about this book in the future then it will have done its job!

A new dyehouse

2010-03-01T14:25:00.009+01:00

Well we've moved in - we are in utter chaos in the house and outside, but at least we are getting started! A friend of ours came over for a week to help John with his workshop, but what they actually did was lots of creating - I got some extra kitchen cabinets, so there is now space for crockery etc. John got his workbenches made and all the heavy equipment in place and I got the beginnings of my dyehouse!

This is what they started with! A good space full of my belongings - but a big mess! Haydn has the pallet truck in hand (below) - an incredibly useful tool (not that we have pallets) but it carries large things round very happily!!

By lunchtime things were progressing nicely - I had a bench down one side of the room for all my smaller dyebaths to go on - it's quite low so I can reach into the top of the bath to get at the yarns, then there's storage space underneath, perfect for plastic boxes of stored dyes and yarns.

It's great fun having a blank canvas to design your workspace - but it's also quite challenging, what do you want in there? What would you do differently to last time? What is vital and what can go elsewhere?

By the end of the day there had been great progress - cupboards up at the back, a worktop for the microwaves, kettle, scales etc. I have 2 tables to work on and lots of dyebaths around. There is a washing machine to go in there and a fridge.

Sady it is still going to be a few weeks before I can get started - there is no water available yet, and as for the electrics - we were warned when buying the property that the electrics needed looking at - so we were forewarned, but I wouldn't like to try and run my boilers off the one socket in the building! There are lots of plans afoot for water, the mains water is very hard, which will be a BIG shock to my system, I'm used to lovely soft water from the Welsh hills, I'm litterally going to have to learn my colours all over again!

But maybe I'll be able to get madder red?!

R.I.P. Blarty

2010-02-15T16:36:00.005+01:00

I have had no internet access for about 2 weeks, so feel very behind the times, added to which moving home has been even more stressful and difficult than first imagined. We are nearly moved - but the goalpost keeps moving further away, so I'll believe it when I'm unpacking boxes!

The worst thing of all though was yesterday.

We had luckily found a fantastic home for Blarty to move to, with a friend from the Ruthin Knitting Group (do go if you're in our area and have the opportunity- it's a fabulous, friendly group). Sian already has some sheep of advancing age and they sound so well cared for that she would have made Blarty forget me very quickly!

We arranged to move him yesterday, so went to the field that he has been in for the past 2 weeks, adjacent to his own field, which is now occupied by the new tenants horses. He came out of the gate quite happily, following the bucket as he normally does, but his usual route was back to his own field in front of the house, so he took it - running away from me and straight down to that gate. We had to get permission to follow and by the time we got there we realized the gate was wide open and Blarty had run in. The horses were behind electric fencing, which sheep don't seem to notice, so he went for his favorite spot by the hedge - the horses did not approve and did not let him get there.

I cannot describe how horrid it all was, Blarty was rushed to the vets in a very bad state and the vet said that the best thing was to put him to sleep, so that is what happened. Sian was fantastic and I cannot thank her enough - she phoned and offered to nurse him if the vet could do anything, but his injuries were just too great.

Rest In Peace, my larger than most woolly friend!
(photo taken about 3 weeks ago)

A good Red

2010-01-18T21:27:00.010+01:00

With everything that is going on at the moment the last thing I would have expected is a new commission! The photo shows the current state of my workshop - I am in the throes of packing everything down ready for the move - hence the even more cluttered than normal appearance - how on earth am I supposed to work in this state?

I needed to produce a good red - in fact replicate a colour I produced back in 2006. My notes could at the moment be anywhere - so I had to rely on educated guesswork!

I have used cochineal and brazilwood, as with my soft water I am more likely to get the correct colour tones from those dyes. I tried cochineal two different ways - firstly the whole bugs and then straining them out and heating them several times to extract as much colour as possible. The second method I used I ground the bugs up first, as finely as I could and then soaked them overnight. I have got some fabulous colours, the photo I've taken is not showing them to their best advantage but they are really rich and deep!

I did have a lightbulb moment whilst doing this work - funny how things hit you really! There is often talk about how much colour rinses out when dyeing with cochineal and after I had completed the first hank - dyed with the liquid from the whole bugs, I was surprised to see how little colour came out in the rinse water - this photo is the first rinse honest!

When I did the second hank in the ground cochineal there was lots of colour coming out - I was stunned, then I looked at the side of the washing up bowl after I'd tipped the liquid away, lots of little grains of cochineal stuck there - too fine to have strained them out before dyeing, and the wool feels fine one rinsed and dried, but the "grains" have to go somewhere! So my tip from this is use the whole bug, or be prepared to do lots of rinsing!

The brazilwood (100%) I soaked overnight heated to boiling and then strained the wood chips off. Allowed the liquid to cool down and then immersed the yarn. Re heated and cooled. Very simple basic method, but it works!

The brazilwood red is the one in the middle, the ground cochineal is at th top and the whole bugs is the one at the bottom. The colour matching seems to be quire accurate too!

Snowmen

2010-01-10T14:48:00.004+01:00

I am feeling a bit grotty at the moment, Nick had "manflu" over New Year - but was vary "brave" about it and kept taking the french version of lemsip which we got from a local "pharmacie". He has very kindly shared the bugs with Dave and myself, so I am now on the english version of lemsips and not getting on as well as I had hoped! (John thankfully has so far warded the bugs off!)

To get a change of air we went out yesterday and John drove past the Drovers Arms our local village pub. Its at the junction of our road and the main road so we can't avoid it!!!

Outside were 2 snowmen that I just had to share with you all!

Aren't they fabulous?

There are times when I so wish I was artistic!

Just looked out the window and it is now snowing again - it had warmed up a little this morning and the icicles outside the back door were starting to melt. Obviously why!

A New Year ..........

2010-01-08T00:14:00.004+01:00

Happy New Year to all readers here, it's started quite magically in more ways than one!

I love the snow - it reminds me so much of growing up on the edge of the Penines and being sent home from school and playing with my sledge in the fields behind the houses, etc, etc. We don't get enough snow in the winter anymore! Maybe in a couple of days I'll have changed that comment, but for now I'm sticking to it!

Christmas and New Year has been very much a family affair for us, Nick and Dave came over on Christmas Eve and stayed until the 4th January. We have played Carcasonne every evening (we are definitely getting adicted, adding in new extensions and characters too!) If you've not come across the game it's great fun - you try to build cities and roads and farms and earn as many points as possible (that's a girlie simplistic view of it!!!) It's difficult to say which of the boys was the best player - but John and I were left behind quite often in the domination game!

We went across to France during the break - left here on the 30th December (with Carcasonne packed in the car!!!) the boys came back on the 4th and we came back yesterday through all the snow.

We actually went to our new home!

We will be leaving here at the end of the month and moving everything over to our beautiful house in the north of France. (This picture was taken in the summer when we first saw it - this is what I fell in love with - a private inner courtyard with 2 walnut trees in the middle) It was just as lovely in the winter with snow on the ground and no leaves on the trees!

On the Sunday we had a day out at the seaside and had a long walk along a beautiful beach at Stella Plage, just below Le Touquet, Paris Plage, when we then drove up into Le Touquet we found all the land yachts and the clubhouse - I have a feeling that if I can't find John he'll be there playing on the beach! The day was gorgeous, but very, very cold. The walk was quite bracing to say the least!

This month is going to be taken up with packing everything that we've accumulated over the last 14 years and trying to decide whether it can be parted with, thrown away, sold, whatever - I'm a dreadful hoarder and can't bear to get rid of anything "just in case" so it's going to be very difficult!

I will try not to be too boring but think it may be fun as we go through things to go "back in time" with various textiley items and then discuss on here whether they should stay or go!

We are also keeping a base over here in the UK and will continue to run the business as we always have doing demonstrations and markets throughout the summer, The Mulberry Dyer is not going anywhere, but Debbie and John are having a home of their own!

Victorian Farm Christmas

2009-12-11T14:19:00.005+01:00

The Christmas specials of the Victorian Farm start tonight at 9pm on BBC2. I love this programme - apart from the fact that Ruth is a good friend I think that they are really well presented and thought out. The whole team work well together, not just the presenters.

Why am I telling you about it - not just because I love the programme but also I am going to be in it! Not sure which of the 3 episodes it will be, but I was invited along to dye ribbons in natural dyes for the Christmas decorations and presents.

Here's Ruth and I during the filming, I actually really enjoyed it - I hate having cameras round me, can even be funny about having my photo taken, but Ruth was so good at leading and the crew were fabulous to work with.

The filming was back in June and I did mention in my blog then that I had been to Shropshire. What I would really like to express is my thanks to the Society of Dyers and Colourists for lending us the original sample of Mauvein that they have in their display at Perkin House, Bradford. You can see the wooden box in this picture - it is the original box that was posted by
William Perkin and still carries the stamp and post mark on the side. The yarns inside are silk and cotton. The colour is absolutely stunning, I may not want to work with the synthetic colours - but it is very obvious why they caused such a stir when you see them close up like this!

We had hoped to try out some new fangled chemical dyes as well as the natural dyes during the filming, but time did really run away with us, so I would like to express my thanks to Kemtex as well for supplying us with some samples to try. Everyone I approached was really helpful.

We used cochineal, weld and indigo in the ribbon dyeing. Ruth was made to work and I supervised, the colours we achieved I think you will agree are pretty fine!

Ribbon dyeing workshops are one of my favorites to run particularly round the November/December time as you can really personalize your Christmas presents with them. All done for this year - but there's always 2010!

Braiding

2009-12-10T16:29:00.012+01:00

After I don't know how long we have finally updated our braiding booklet! We actually managed to get it ready for TORM, but this is the first chance I've had to write about it!

A good friend of ours - Jane has become obsessed with braiding since she first bought a disk and spends endless hours creating and using them - all her Christmas presents are going to be tied up with hand made braids in Christmassy glizzy type yarns, she's even dreaming up her own designs by combining different patterns together -

Take a look as these -

She provided me with lots and lots of good samples of the various patterns in the book so I've been able to put photos of the braids with the instructions at long last! What a difference it makes to the appearance! I've also put a photo on the cover, and to crown it all there are at long last instructions for making a rik-rak braid!

If you have an orginal copy of the booklet then you can get an addendum sheet with the rik-rak braid on - just email me and I'll send it to you, or alternatively come and see us at one of our events and collect one! If you don't have the booklet - well.........Braiding Booklet

The price of the booklet remains the same - £3 (good value hey!!)

This picture shows you the squisk or the disk - the squisk can be easier to use for the flat braids like the rik-rak as you need to define the warp and weft threads more, but any of the braids can be done on either tool. John created the squisk because someone asked him to make a square plate, when he tried it out he decided it was simpler to make a larger disk with 2 sides cut off!! Some people prefer working with 1 and some the other!

The squisk is £12 and the disk is £9.50 the kits are £18 and £15 respectively and these include the booklet, overlay and pins and 3 naturally dyed wools. Braiding Disk Kit

Briefly home!

2009-11-26T21:05:00.007+01:00

We are home again - but briefly!

T.O.R.M. was great fun, as always. Here's John in 18th century costume just putting cloth out on the atall - we haven't opened yet! (He looks neater when his waitcoat is on!!!)

We set up early on the Friday morning and the market opens at midday, from then on you barely get a minute to think, but it's always really good to see friends and customers old and new. The social side is just as important as the trade really!

Forest Glass were just behind us with all their beautiful historical handblown glass. I love it - most of my glassware now comes from them!

Trinity Court Potteries were no where near us - but we share a cottage with Jim and Emma, so I had to show you their beautiful pottery too!

My final picture is History in the Making - Simon handmakes all the furniture that you can see here When we are all camping in the summer they bring their four poster bed which Simon made with the hangings hand stitched by Lesley - really stylish!

Our next trip is to Ludlow Medieval Christmas Fayre - off tomorrow!

T.O.R.M. and preparing stock

2009-11-10T22:39:00.010+01:00

Keeping up to date with this blog is quite hard when working away so much, but I guess it's time for an update!

The heading is T.O.R.M which stands for The Original Reenactors Market. There are two markets a year one in March and the other in November which I wouldn't miss (unless something catastrophic happened of course, she says touching wood rapidly!) They are held at The Sports Connexion, Ryton on Dunsmore, Coventry. It's a huge sports complex, (I believe it's where Coventry City practice, but not being into football, that may be wrong!) the whole place is taken over by historical traders - you can buy anything you need from any period in time (well it seems like it anyway!) If you have a requirement for pots, swords, muskets, flutes, drums, clothing, cloth...............etc, etc.

For me this is my showcase for historical yarns and cloth, and all John's textile tools. I started this business by chance because I wasn't able to get involved with the "battle" side of reenactment when I joined the Sealed Knot, because the boys were only 5 & 7. They were too young to be left - so I needed to give myself a "character", decided that I'd be a 17th century embroideress and learnt to spin and dye silk to make my embroidery threads. Some kind soul asked if they could buy some and the business was born! I started trading at TORM about 14 years ago now maybe even longer - I've lost count - and love the atmosphere there, and the cameraderie!

What this actually means is that I am madly busy in the dyehouse and hanking/balling/bagging etc, etc! I sell dyes as well as the dyed items - I think customers value the fact that I am selling the dyes that I use - so they can see the quality in my own colour production! I also have a couple of dye kits, one for indigo dyeing and the other is the Mediaeval Dyekit.

John's textile tools are always popular - though I say it myself his braiding disk is the best on the market, and we've produced a booklet with a variety of braids to try! Working from achaeological finds and illustrations in the books of hours and paintings he's also produced reproduction niddy noddy's, spindles, tablet looms, lucettes, distaffs. ......

I always label my hanks with the dye - it means that customers can see straight away what has been used and whether it is appropriate to their period - or they can ask. We can be very pedantic about what a customer can or can't have in terms of dyestuff and their period/status!!! (It also means I don't have to wrack my brains to try and come up with fancy dancy names for the colours!!!

Ah well back to labelling - those silks have been hanked up now and are nearly ready!

Sundial

2009-10-16T21:19:00.007+02:00

Several computers later I finally manage to get onto blogger!!! We have been away as usual to here there and everywhere (well Mid Wales, Buckinghamshire, London and Northern France if we're being exact) and when I got home I couldn't get my computer to switch on. It would go to a screen which said " you did not close down properly ........do you want to open in this that or the other mode, a load more waffle and a count down timer clock. When the clock got to zero a dotty bar came across and the computer would start the whole process again. I'm sure it would still be doing it, but my son in law said buy a gizmo to put the hard drive in and connect it to another computer. £40 poorer I connected to my fathers computer - which didn't want to play either!!! I wish I wasn't such a technophobe, but I don't actually know where to get help that works for me!!!! If I read the help files they are talking gobbledygook and if I go on a course it's toooooooo basic.

Anyway enough of my whinge, I haven't done any dyeing - for obvious reasons, although I have done a workshop in Buckinghamshire which was really excellent and hopefully there are a new wave of enthusiastic dyers in that Guild! Tomorrow I am off to Gloucester to do a talk to another Guild and then on Tuesday I go to Poland for the 28th Dyes in History and Archaeology Conference, so I guess I won't get much opportunity to write other than this evening!

Yesterday was the birthday of both my John and Helen Melvin's John if you've read earlier posts there is a note from Helen asking for a sundial to be made for her John's birthday present - it was duly delivered!

It is a polar dial rather that the usual vertical or horizontal dials that are most commonly seen on walls or in gardens. They have to be made specifically for their location or they won't tell the time accurately, but this dial is the same wherever it is - however your latitude and longitude are very important - it has to be positioned at an angle equal to the latutude of the location and facing south.

It is made from Welsh slate from the Berwyn Slate Mine in Llangollen and hand made, polished and carved with all the details needed to tell the time. I have to confess that I am beginning to appreciate more and more the many complex ways they had for telling the time in the past. Before the advent of the trains we had different times in different parts of the country (UK I'm talking about here, but I think it must have applied everywhere) it was only because you needed to know what time a train was going to arrive or depart that it got changed!

The gnomon and pillars are made from brass, the box on the left hand side is the equation of time - this indicates the difference between clock and sun time. The earths orbit round the sun is an elipse, not a circle so there are inequalities between the two times, you have to add or subtract the difference shown on the chart from the dial to get the "clock" time. Easy!

Then you need the sun to shine!

Failed Experiment?

2009-09-28T18:53:00.013+02:00

Isn't it amazing how the mind can play tricks on you?

Between my back door and the dyehouse door there is an elder tree, at the moment it is overloaded with berries and taunts me everytime I walk out of the back door!

In the back of my mind I was convinced that I had read in Ethel Mairet's book (Natural Dyes) that if you dye linen with elderberries then it is a permanent dye, so I thought I would do an experiment!

The first thing was to find the book - this was a success!!! I found the relevant page and read under

Blues

"Elder Sambucus nigra Berries"

then a little further down

"Sloe* Prunus communis. Fruit"

"*on boiling sloes, their juice becomes red, and the red dye which imparts to linen changes, when washed with soap, into a bluish colour, which is permanent"

Aha - I had read it, but got my berries muddled! So off I went to the sloes at the end of the field. This photo looks like a damson but I can assure you the thorns got us when collecting the fruit! (I fancy having a pick at the lichen, but I'm a good girl and I won't touch it!!!) from the bush we got about 750g of fruit. Into the pan it went and was boiled for about 3/4 hour. I then left it overnight and maybe this is where things went wrong!

The colour of the fruit when boiling was much darker than this pinky colour I have here - this was taken after straining out the mush, it's frothy cos it's just been strained into a jug and then poured back into the pan.

I had a piece of linen cloth and a piece of wool cloth which together weighed about 150g, so I thought that was a very generous ratio of dyestuff to fibre and immersed them and heated them back to boiling and kept there for about another 3/4 hour.

The colour was a pretty wishy washy pink as far as I can see! The linen is on the left and the wool on the right.

So the instructions say wash in soap and the colour should change - out came the soap flakes - hmmm neutral, olive oil soap? Still no colour change, in the end I decided that all my detergents are neutral and tried adding washing soda to the washing water!!! I have to be honest and say I can't see much happening in the water, but I left everything soaking overnight again in the vague hope that some miracle would happen. !

I guess the answer has to be - NO!

The wool (on the left) has actually changed more than the linen (which looks exactly the same to me!)

I will do a lightfastness test on them in my South facing window and see what happens, but I don't think that this has done what Ethel suggested!

I have also now found a reference in Dominique Cardon (Natural Dyes) to dyeing with Elder - so maybe I will collect the fruit and try it. Bilberry seems to be the best of the fruits with quite a few finds showing evidence of being dyed with them, however my absolute FAVORITE pie is bilberry, (or whimberry if you're a Lancashire lass like me) so if I pick any I know where they'll be going and it won't be a dyepot!

Flags for the Battle of Flodden

2009-09-24T01:50:00.026+02:00

Earlier this year I received a commission to produce 3 flags for the Battle of Flodden site at Etal Castle (English Heritage)

The first thing to be established was - which 3? I enlisted the help of a friend who studied heraldry to help with this one - we came up with a list of 12 flags known to be used at the battle and EH chose Argyll, Huntley and St Cuthbert.

The flags were to be naturally dyed and handstitched, approximately 3 ft square and on 8ft poles with finials.

The images above are what I had to work from with information on which colour was to be used where. The biggest challenge was finding a good linen to make them up. I tried all my favorite suppliers and Goodmans Linens found a lovely sateen linen with a very close weave, suited the purpose admirably! For the boars heads and crosses in gold I used a hemp silk - it had more stability than a plain silk and the lions were to be in the undyed linen.

After working out how much of each material was to be dyed in each colour I set to work scouring, mordanting and finally dyeing.

The linen was mordanted in alum and washing soda and the hemp silk in aluminium acetate, all the cloth was also mordanted in tannin. The black was iron over the tannin and then into indigotin.

The gold was produced with Persian Berries. Although I know they were used historically I am quite late in coming to love this dyestuff. I have only really used them if specifically requested to , I tend to prefer weld or dyers broom - but on this occasion I knew I'd get a better colour tone with the berries! The blue is indigotin - obviously! I had blue nails for a couple of weeks after this dyeing - to get the cloth even I had to move the fabric under the surface almost continuously and I couldn't use rubber gloves! I had tried to get the blue darker, but after 4 dips I really didn't think my hands could take anymore!

So there we are our base is ready to go! John was given the job of working out the Argyll flag - triangles of the correct size were beyond my brain power, but I set to work on the other two.

Working on the Huntley first (the boars heads seemed an easier option than the lions to break myself in!!) I've enlarged the boars head to a useable size and I needed 6, 3 each side . The paper was used as a template to cut round for the cloth and then I blanket stitched all round the edges before attaching them to the background pieces. The two sides were joined together and the hanging loops put in.

Here's the finished article! (On pole with finial!)

As I said it was John who did all the work on the Argyll flag - just to prove he can do the handstitching as well as the cutting out here he is!

The finished flag - I folded it back so it's obvious that there are two sides the same.

The last flag to be completed was the St Cuthbert, this is known to have been carried by the English Army, although I don't actually know the relevance! It required 2 crosses and 8 lions, the crosses were relatively easy, they were just blanket stitched onto the background.

The lions were first blanket stitched onto the background and then the details added in to give them definition

The finished flag looked like this!

So now you know why I've been so quiet recently, in between going away - I've been sewing round lions and crosses and boars heads and wish I could work with a thimble on, there is a very definite hole in my middle finger!

Weekends

2009-09-08T21:15:00.007+02:00

I am so shattered at the moment that even when I think I will come up to the computer and do an update I go to bed instead!!! I think it stems from being away every weekend (which takes out Fridays and Mondays with packing travelling, unpacking, washing and getting things ready to go again.) Then Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are re-stocking and sorting orders days! Life is a bit of a blur to say the least - at least there is a break after this weekend until the first weekend of October!

Having said all that I have just spent a fabulous weekend working at Mellor Open Weekend. The site is amazing and our hosts Ann and John Hearle were lovely, made us very welcome and clearly are totally devoted to their project! So with that in mind I am going to tell you about it all!

John has owned the Old Vicarage for over 40 years and has a history in textiles - being a professor (retired) from Manchester University. (He's quite happy to talk to little me about cotton too!) Ann is totally involved in the organisation of the Heritage Trust and the open weekend. Their garden is gorgeous but currently dug into trenches for the archaeologists to have a good rootle in!

We first found out about the site last year when we were contacted by Stockport Museums to go and spin and dye for the dvd being produced for the iron age site. I understand that this will be available from December this year.

We set ourselves up by the round house, the ground was incredibly soggy but there was plenty of straw to put down, the marquee next to us had weaving and pottery demonstrations, there was metal detecting for the children and Ancient Crafts had a display of tools and a lathe for working stone. There were lots and lots of visitors - it was an incredibly popular venue, guided tours were given of the digs and there was a display in the village hall of all the finds. The main feature was the amber necklace , but there were so many finds that it filled 2 rooms of the village hall!

I'm really sorry I have no photos with this post - I took some pics on my phone, but when I try to email them they won't go - the technophobe strikes again. If they ever work I'll update this entry!

Blarty

2009-08-22T21:41:00.009+02:00

I'm sure I've probably mentioned somewhere along the line that I have 1 pet sheep - Blarty.

I wanted Wensleydale sheep, years ago, when I started spinning; so I bought 2 ewes Winnie and Minnie - sadly I don't have any pictures of them - they were 1 year old when I bought them and the farmer next door introduced them to his Welsh ram that first autumn, next Spring I was presented with 4 baby boys - 2 sets of twins each. (Mr Fox got one of them very young and two went to the butcher - but Blarty -!)

For some reason known only to herself Winnie decided to do what sheep do best and give up the ghost - we fought all day to keep her alive; the vet said that somehow she had got dehydrated???????? (it was doing what it does best in Wales at the time and raining with a vengeance!) We moved her to the stable and I had to go our every 1/2 hour to give her water with sugar in it through a syringe to the back of her throat - I went out at 9pm, at 9.30pm she was no longer with us........ I'd been going since 10am!!!! Weeeell I couldn't leave Minnie on her own could I? So Blarty stayed. His name comes from the fact that I refused to name him, but he Blaaaaarted a lot, and became known as "that Blarty thing in the field"!

A couple of years ago Minnie decided she's had enough, we're not sure why, but we still have Blarty, he's about 10 maybe even 11 this year and still going strong......

Why am I telling you all this?

I was in the dyehouse this morning beavering away and suddenly I heard "Blaart" very loud, so turned round to find Blarty rather closer that usual! I was a little slow with the camera - as you can see he's already got bored and is moving on....!

Farmers! - they use your fields for access and are the worst culprits for leaving the gates open! "Oh" said Ewan, when I went out to see what was going on - "I thought the field was empty" How long has Blarty been here?!

I never got round to starting a dyebath today, although I've several things on the go for tomorrow..... but I thought you might like to meet my friend, who spent most of the day following me round.

His fleece is lovely - curly but strong - and I dye it regularly, mainly for my own samples, but I occasionally give some away to those that appreciate where it's come from!

Catching Up

2009-08-04T18:03:00.005+02:00

I can't believe how long it is since I wrote something! Life has been absolutely manic - and isn't slowing down yet either!

Trying to think about where we have been since Penryn - well there was Azincourt at the end of July, it was a really fun trip - I went with a friend called Claire who encouraged me to join the Sealed Knot way back in the very beginning - you could almost blame her for where I am now!! (John was working at Kelmarsh demonstrating dyeing at the English Heritage event "Festival of History".)

I had to borrow Claire's tent for Azincourt so here's a photo of the stock laid out, it worked quite well in her round tent, the only trouble was I had to camp in a modern tent over by the museum - very uncool at a medieval event!!!

I returned home on the Wednesday and did a quick turn round to Norton Priory - there on the Friday for the "Medieval Mersey Traders" weekend. Sir John Myddleton's Companie are their signature event each year drawing their best visitor numbers - and we even managed to increase them again this time! We were shortlisted for a prestigious Merseyside award "Tourism Experience of the Year". As our competition was Liverpool Museum and Art Galleries in their "City of Culture" year, I think we came out rather well!!

I love going to Norton it's such a tranquil place - in the middle of an industrial estate (albeit an upmarket one) with a major dual carriageway running alongside it - the gardens are beautiful. This photo is of the avenue we were camped in, there is also a medieval herb garden (which was featured on the Secret Gardens programme on BBC) and there is a huge walled garden which houses the national quince collection (and I believe gooseberries as well) there's a good cafe and the amazing St Christopher statue as well as the excavated ruins!!

I haven't any dyeing news at the moment - we've been away too much for me to do any, but I'm home for the next week and a half and hopefully will re - visit the brazilwood dyeing I attempted earlier in the year when running my "dyeing the reds" course for the Online Guild.

I find writing this blog helps me focus on what I'm doing (I know I've not written anything for about a month, but I do have an excuse!!) and I'm really enjoying going back over photos and reliving events - they seem to flash past when we're away this much! I was updating the events calendar on the website earlier and realize that it goes on into October before we really get any let up - it's no wonder I never remember Christmas!

Many thanks to all of you who read and follow my blog, I will hopefully have something more "meaty" for you soon!

Our other kind of work

2009-07-13T23:50:00.010+02:00

Last Saturday found us working in the middle of a field in Penryn, Cornwall, doing what seems to take up virtually every weekend from May through to certainly October, with some of November and December thrown in! We were doing period demonstrations - on this occasion early Medieval - but it can be anything from Roman through to the advent of chemical dyes (Victorian). We dress in the appropriate clothing and talk about whatever our subject may be for that day. Normally I get to be a dyer, although sometimes I am a spinner and occasionally I even get to be something totally different. John has far more variety, he is an apothecary, or a pin and needle maker, or a cartographer (his Saturday job!) or plague doctor, or jet worker, lots of varieties of John!

The top picture is our 2 awnings side by side, dyer on the left and cartographer on the right. We both had lots of interest over the day - it was so wet that anyone who actually turned out had to be interested! Really the residents of Penryn were fabulous and came out in quite large numbers!

This is John's table with beautifully made sun dials (but no sun, so we couldn't tell the time!) actually you can see three versions of sundials, the one hanging up is a shepherds dial and was carried round, the one flat on the table is a Capuchin dial and the one whose face you can see on the stand is an Equatorial dial. He has a selection of maps and devices for measuring distances and writing implements for doing his mapping.

I have a dyebath - well actually its a twin tub version I have the ability to have 2 colours on the go at any one time. Usually I do onions skins as they are really simple and woad as it is very complex (and magic!). There are a selection of hanks hanging up - they are hung out like this everytime and have been in use I would think for at least 8 years. The madder, weld and woad have not faded at all, the brazilwood on the left has faded quite dramatically - it was only an exhaust bath so was never particularly dark and paler colours are known to fade out first - the hank is almost white on the outside and very pink on the inside. The same applies to the turmeric hank at the other end, it is virtually white on the outside but very yellowy gold on the inside. The tops that are on the far right have been dyed in an exhaust onion skin bath, they are actually darker than they look here.

We are normally allowed to trade at these events so in the background you can see a small selection of stock as well. There is a tray of silks, some cloth hanging up, linens in their trays, wools in baskets and some of John's woodwork. At the front of the table is a box with some dyestuffs in and madder root, a woad ball and a pomegranate husk on top, then there is a medieval piss pot and a glass bottle with essence of John in it!

We have put a tremendous amount of time into researching what we do, so it's great that we get these opportunities to use our knowledge to educate people, especially children. I love watching their faces when I pull a piece of cloth out of the woad bath and ask them what colour it is - "yellowy or greeny" they say, "oh no!" I say "it's blue!"

Weld or Dyers Rocket

2009-07-06T23:22:00.006+02:00

Not long ago I posted a picture of the Weld plant that had seeded itself just outside John's workshop. You can see it's barely half way up the gas bottle it's growing next to, really doesn't look to have the space to do anything much!

The area that it has decided to grow in is really quite rough - the black bag contains sawdust and scraps of wood from John's workshop (we use them to soak up the mud that we get when it rains here, it can get like a swimming pool in our back yard!)

This is of course the preferred environment for the Weld plant, the scrubbier the better almost, we used to go to Tesco to collect it - there was a new car park and the ground was turned over and left - it was a fabulous crop for a couple of years - but sadly it's been cultivated now!

It now appears that I have a Weld tree! It is in flower and looking magnificent, it reminds me of a Christmas tree with candles attached to the ends of the branches all lit up! it is higher than the doorway into John's workshop and takes up so much space that you can barely get past it! I am not going to cut it down yet - it's not quite ready, but it shouldn't be long! Actually I feel quite guilty about cutting such a fantastic plant down I wish they went on and on!

There has been lots of debate about when the best time for cutting is, I am no expert and seem to have cut weld at all stages of flowering and even almost dead over the years, and had colour from all of them, hard to actually say which I found the best. Sadly I have been very remiss about keeping records of cropping times. One day I would like to have enough weld growing to do an experiment and start cropping from when first in flower right through to when almost dying off. What I can say is that the Weld I have collected from the East of the country (York area and Norfolk/Suffolk) has yielded a much better colour than that grown here in the West (Oswestry, Mold, Whitchurch).

There has been a project in Italy looking at yields from various varieties of weld with a view to turning it into an agricultural crop. Its title is Agronomic potential of Reseda luteola L. as new crop for natural dyes in textile production by Luciana Angelini, Alessandra Bertoli, Sabina Rolandelli and Luisa Pistelli. from the abstract:

Six weld genotypes were evaluated for their agronomic characteristics in a 4 year field study carried out under rainfed conditions in Central Italy in order to point out productive potential and the best harvest time to maximise yield of dye.......the harvest of plants during flowering or during beginning of fruit ripening did not affect overall dry yield. The luteolin amount was affected by climatic conditions as experienced in two different growing seasons and by the plant phenological stages at harvest being luteolin most abundant in the driest year and in plants harvested during flowering. Genetic variablility existed for the luteolin content in leaves plus reproductive structures (inflorescences and fruits) that varied from 13.6 to 28.7 mg g-1 dry weight in the six accessions tested. Separated weld organs showed different dyeing capacities being the leaves, inflorescences and fruits the most effective ones..............

Their results seem inconclusive due to the effects of rainfall but they consider the best time for harvesting is when flowering as that is the highest luteolin content. They don't use the stems of the plants - they consider there is no colouring matter there.

There is so much to learn..........!

A return to the subject of Washfastness

2009-07-04T22:58:00.005+02:00

Before Woolfest I was doing some washfastness testing of my yarns, I do these tests at random times and on random yarns so I get an idea of how good (or bad) the dyes I'm using are, and my standards of mordanting and dyeing of course.

My method is following the recommendations in Gill Dalby's book Natural dyes fast or fugitive (a very good book and one that I think doesn't get enough praise, it's small and reasonably priced and chock full of really sound information!) The tests are not totally scientific of course - I don't have access to full laboratories and testing equipment, but I make the best use of what I have.

The yarns are stitched into mordanted cotton parcels (I reckon that if there is colour leaching then the mordanted cotton will take up the dye and show staining more clearly than unmordanted) I use my washing machine on the whites wash cycle and a temperature of 60 degrees (not very environmentally friendly, but it is for a specific purpose and only at random times not every week or day) full spin and Bob's your uncle! The detergent I used for these samples was Amway SA8 colour, a powder detergent that I have used for many years, originally I bought it because it was great for septic tanks, it isn't actually organically certified, but is certainly more environment concious that most. I also have Ecover non Bio in the laundry room. I don't add fabric softeners in the laundry but I do always give my wools a final rinse of Eucalan when I've finished dyeing - it's a fabric conditioner and moth repellant and I like it lots!

This sample is wool, it's not the clearest of images and you can tell that the wool hasn't liked the boil wash but there is no transfer of colour at all onto the cotton, the threads on the right are originals and the felted blobs are the ones that have been washed. There is barely any difference in the colours between the originals and the blobs.

The dyes used here were indigo, persian berry and persian berry overdyed with indigo for the green, the yarn is my Welsh wool, it's a 2 ply yarn but knits up as a four ply and is fab for socks because it's so hardwearing (felts well too!!!)

The next samples were some linen yarns. The colour that you can see on the cotton is actually fibres that have rubbed off the linen, not colour transfer, not sure whether the photo is clear enough for you to make that out - but "in the flesh" it is obvious! Here the dyes used were madder, cochineal and logwood, again there is virtually no difference between the original colour and the washed. There are different thicknesses of thread some 8/2, 16/2 and 28/2. It's the 8/2 dyed with cochineal that has "rubbed" off onto the cotton, the others have a much higher twist to them, so I guess that's what's helped there.

I've given information about the detergents I use because it's another thing that can affect the dye colours - if I used one that was more alkaline I could find that the colours actually changed in the wash, the cochineals would go more purple for example, yet another thing to watch out for!

Back to the dyehouse!

2009-07-01T21:25:00.004+02:00

This time of year is always manic - so keeping up with the blog is going to be quite difficult, I will try and give regular updates - as much to keep my head above water as anything!

First point - I forgot my camera, how I managed to do so I don't know - but I got to St Andrews and had to go and buy a disposable, (when I finally get them developed in the old fashioned way I will see if any are suitable for showing off!) talk about feeling stupid!!!

The ceremony was very intriguing, the graduates walk to the middle of the stage, kneel in front of the Principal, are hit on the head with what is said to be a piece of John Knox's breeches made into a cap, have their cape flung over ther heads and then sedately walk the rest of the way across the stage to collect their certificates! They each did it in turn, no one tripped up or had any catastrophe and I was a very proud Mum! Then there was the garden party with everyone very well turned out and we had champagne and afternoon tea. The weather was fine, but not scorching (although I did wear my sunhat!) and it was all very social!

Peterborough through the Ages over the weekend was also very successful - the weather was not the usual for an event like this, (I packed away a very dry tent!) and when the Archbishop of Canterbury walked past my tent he smiled at me as though I was a friend! Lots of people came to see what we were doing and were genuinely interested in all the activities and periods. (still no camera though!)

Yesterday I had to take the Mauvein back to Bradford, I was attending a meeting to discuss the future of the Colour Experience (was the Colour Museum) and how to spread the word about it's educational activities. They cover national curriculum key stages and teach colour and colour perception. The headquarters of the Society of Colourists and Dyers is in the same building and are the funding body. It was really good to meet people I have spoken to by email and on the phone and get to see the exhibits. I'm now trying to help promote them!!!

Here it is all safe and sound back in its cabinet - you wouldn't believe it had been out for a jolly to Wales and Shropshire would you?!

I have a work placement student with me this week, so am having to try and work in some sort of sensible manner, I'm not sure I'm succeeding as yet, she came to Bradford with me yesterday and has been preparing her own hank of wool for dyeing today! We have lots of cloth to be getting on with this week, so my bit was to start scouring 4m wool cloth ready to mordant tomorrow. The actual dyeing will probably be over the weekend, but we might get some done, before she goes on Friday!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

2009-06-21T00:46:00.003+02:00

Ages since I've had time to write anything - well not be too tired at the end of the day, to be honest! Obviously the biggest issue has been getting things ready for Woolfest, which I sadly will not be attending - but John will, so don't think The Mulberry Dyer isn't turning up! Our stall number is A6-7.

Everything seems to happen at once round here, Nick has his graduation on Thursday (which is setting up day) - he has a 2:1 in Medieval History, well done Nick!- then on the Saturday and Sunday we have a booking to demonstrate dyeing in the cathedral gardens at Peterborough, so it seemed logical that I go up to St Andrews and then down the A1 to Peterborough and John goes to Cumbria. I'm hoping that lots of people will go and talk to him and feed and water him regularly - it's very hard doing a big show like that all on your own - and he's demonstrating the extract dyes as well, I should say letting people have a play with them really!

I guess the other news I have is my day out last Thursday - I was asked to go and dye Christmas ribbons with Ruth Goodman for the Victorian Farm programme, there are going to be some Christmas Specials, so I'm going to be on the tele!!! I really don't like having cameras around me, hate the sound of my own voice and was VERY nervous beforehand, but the crew were lovely and made it all very easy, at one point John said there were 3 cameras all pointing at me - and I carried on talking! I just hope I said things right! One of the most exciting things about the day was talking about the advent of the chemical dyes - a subject I had to gen up on beforehand as I really know nothing about it - I was very honoured to have a sample of Mauvein, dyed by Mr Perkins himself, sent to me by the Society of Dyers and Colourists for use in the filming, I would just like to express my appreciation here for their support in letting us have this precious item (I did wonder if it would arrive handcuffed to the Curators arm, but no, it was all mine for the duration!) it was definitely the star feature, not me! I must confess that the colour is really quite stunning, it's obvious why it caused such a sensation when you see it "in the flesh"

There is a distinct lack of photos with this post - John has a new camera, really super duper, stuff (way beyond my ken!) as yet we haven't worked out how to download the photos for me to use, so my apologies, I'll try and do better tomorrow!

Back to work

2009-06-10T20:57:00.004+02:00

The holiday was lovely, I had such a relaxing time, the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful and I was allowed to just read my book without interuption of any kind (an absolute luxury these days!) I understand that we were very lucky with the weather - it seems to have rained almost continuously for the past 9 months, if the locals are to be believed - it was glorious sunshine for the whole time I was there!

However that was then and now we are back - I came back early to attend the Ravelry Day in Coventry, which was great fun, but very wet! So nice to meet lots of Ravellers, many I knew and many more I met for the first time, I ran a workshop for 2 hours - not really enough time to get anything constructive done, but we had fun playing with extract dyes, next year there will be 4 days in Stirling so we can be much more thorough!

Woolfest is now very close on the horizon, so I have a couple of weeks of frantic dyeing and hanking etc, I know the time will fly by, I hope to do some more experimenting as I'm going along and I'll let you have previews of the colours as they're ready!

Only a short update today, but lots on the horizon!

Holiday

2009-05-30T00:28:00.004+02:00

I should already be in bed - have to get up at 4.45 to catch the ferry to Ireland- but didn't want to go without saying tara rwan!

I'll leave you with some photos of indigo dyeing I've been doing this week - I had a really good bath going and the colour is really rich!

On the far left is my Welsh sock wool, I've already hanked that into individual 50g's (it come in 500g hanks) then there's the embroidery wool - lovely and fine and finally some beautiful lace weight alpaca silk. I will have some of it at the Ravelry Day in Coventry next weekend.

Following on from an earlier post - having dyed the blues and then hanked up the Welsh I thought I'd better take a photo of my hand - just to see how much rub off there is - so here you are:

I can't say my hand is spotless, but I can say that the colour is ingrained, not just come off the hank! I always run the thread through my left hand whilst winding off - so that's 500g - there would be a stripe of blue across the fingers and palm if there had been any problems!

The method I use when dyeing indigotin blues is my own combination of various people's - principally J Liles and M Whipplinger, with a little help from Ethel Mairet. I make a concentrate and then make up the dyebath, I do lots of blue from 1 bath - keep it going all day and do blues first and then overdyeing afterwards (greens and purples). The main dyebath has probably been on the go for about 12 months and just gets topped up with concentrate as and when I feel it needs it. I can't bear to throw any away, so I even save drips and pour them back after I've finished for the day. I only ever use natural indigo - there is no synthetic in my house, I will sometimes make up a woad bath if there is a specific reason to do so, but generally I use indigo.

I'm now going to head for bed - I'll tell you what I think of cruising on the Shannon - Erne waterways when I get back!

Cellulose Mordanting

2009-05-21T15:18:00.006+02:00

When I first started on my path as a natural dyer I wanted to work with silk. I was particularly interested in making embroidery silks that I could use for 17th century reenactment. Very soon after starting I came across references to using linen as the ground for the embroidery and wondered if I could dye the linen base.

The learning experience is unusual with natural dyes, you start off thinking "oh this is easy" then you progress to the " I know that already" stage, and then you begin to realize that the subject is so huge that you can only scratch the surface in a lifetime. I have been at that stage for quite a while, but I do feel that having concentrated on dyeing silk and linen I am pretty competent at getting a good colour on those particular fibres. I would never describe myself as an expert - ever- after all "an ex is a has been and a spurt is a drip under pressure" and who would want to be described thus? But I digress as usual.

The point behind this post is that I have been doing some experimenting with cellulose mordants, the results I have obtained so far (and I do accept that it is a very simplistic start) have made me realize that I need to do some serious study here and ultimately write an academic paper on it, so please excuse me, but I am going to put a copyright on this post, in preparation for that final paper!

Coming from an historical perspective I have always used the alum tannin mordant method for linen (and cotton). I use oak galls as my tannin source, rather than tannic acid, to appease the environmentalist in me, I may have to adjust proportions accordingly, but I follow given recipes. My first reference when I started on cellulose was Gill Dalby's book natural dyes for vegetable fibres. She was an amazing lady who did much to promote natural dyes - and worked with the environment in mind, it is from her book I get the 8% alum and 7% cream of tartar recipe for protein fibres. Jim Liles The art and craft of natural dyeing was my next book and I learned about using aluminium acetate as a mordant from him. (both are well stained as you can imagine!) When I started using the Earthues extracts I thought I'd try out the commercially produced aluminium acetate as Michelle Whipplinger is so pro using it, it's certainly quick and easy and is very good if you have a mixed fibre combination like hemp silk.

In my own sweet little world though I wasn't so sure, so I decided to do a simple experiment. I broke a 100g hank of cotton (my wonderful new organic cotton boucle, which will be available very soon!!!) into smaller hanks of even size. Wetted them out for a couple of days first and then scoured them with washing soda and detergent keeping them all together. I then put 2 into an aluminium acetate mordant and 2 went through the alum and tannin method of mordanting. After rinsing them well I dyed 1 of each in madder and 1 of each in cochineal extract. The only thing that was different about the preparation was the actual mordant. Now look at the results! The alum tannin has taken the dye much more intensely for both dyes. I have not cheated here, it was a straightforward simple experiment.

Based on what I've seen so far, I think I will continue to use the older method for now - but as I get more into the research I'll keep you informed - and in the mean time I'll continue to stock aluminium acetate powder in my shop!!!

Colours in nature

2009-05-14T22:43:00.007+02:00

Colour is getting to me this Spring. I don't know why this year in particular, but I seem to be noticing the way colours are reflected off the landscape and wild flowers, my attention is constantly being diverted.

When we went to Llanberis I was really drawn to the scars in the rock face where they are quarrying the slate. The contrasts between the fawns and greens of the moorland and the grey slashes, then the bright yellow of the gorse, I'm finding really absorbing. It is making me want to go into the dyehouse and start trying to reproduce these colours and contrasts on my yarns.

Looking at this lump of slate (it was like a standing stone just outside the museum) the weathering has created so many different veins of colour from almost white to yellows and rusty browns as well as the many shades of grey!

Normally when working with the natural dyes I am producing replica colours for different periods of history - so modern fashion trends have never featured in my choice of colours. (I do wonder sometimes whether I should go and check out what the "next season's colours" will be from the fashion designers, but theirs and mine are never going to look the same - well not until I've got them all convinced that thay don't want to be using anything but my dyed cloth!! - so it becomes a bit irrelevant.) I guess I'm going to be going my own way as normal this year - but it all might be a bit different, I don't mean all dull and muted so much as different contrasts and unusual mixes!

My friend Helen produces the most fantastic felted pictures using naturally dyed fibres, my favorites are always her waterfalls - there is so much motion in them and definition, so here's a new idea! I'm calling it slatefall!

I love the stillness of the rock as opposed to the wild crashing of water, which is my usual choice, but there is still a movement there!

The Peris Boat

2009-05-10T15:08:00.013+02:00

Yesterday our friends Russ and Liz came to visit. They inhabit the same historical world that we do and provide Viking boat demonstrations. Recently Russ added in a Tudor boat to his display and a few weeks ago we went along to visit him and help with his publicity photos - suitably attired! (I'm in the red gown with yellow underskirt and blue hat)We had a really fun day outside the old hall setting up the boat and playing around in front of such a wonderful backdrop. We developed quite an audience of locals in the end trying to work out what was going on (maybe they thought the ghosts had come alive!!!)

The reason for their visit yesterday was Russ had discovered by chance that there is an original Tudor boat in a museum in Llanberis - so off we went down to Snowdonia for the afternoon!

We started at the slate museum, thinking that would be a logical place - she was found at the lakeside just outside the museum building, however as with all these things, they're never where you expect and we had to go round to the Electric Mountain Visitor Centre! (This was actually to our advantage as we didn't have to pay anything to go in and see her, not that we would have begrudged paying, it would have been worth ever penny) She's just through the main entrance hall in a large exhibition room and is the only thing in there except for chairs and local artists' work on the walls, she is so accessible that you can wander all round, and even get "up close and personal" with a ruler to get all the dimensions! Sadly there was no archaeological report available, so further investigation is required on that front.

"Tudor boat" to me conjors up images of the Mary Rose and battleships and Francis Drake etc, but in reality the Peris boat is for working along the shores of the lake (similar boats would have plied the coast) going from each of the harbours selling fish or transporting animals and people to their next destination. The design is very similar to the period paintings of "Cock Boats" She would have been "powered" by 2 or 3 rowers and the rollock holes for the oars are very obvious in the wood of the inwales.

The amount of history in those few pieces of wood is fantastic - the method of construction is very clear - oak was very common in N Wales hundreds of years ago - the whole area was forested, "clinker built" means that the planks were split radially with a hammer and wedges and then these individual planks were fitted together by a method known as scarfing, that is tapering and joining of two opposing ends to make a strake. (image is of scarfing)

A strake was a continuous row of planks long enough to run from one end of the boat to the other. The strakes were overlapped at the edges and then joined (top edge to bottom edge of the next strake) to form a series of lands, they were fastened with wrought iron nails clenched over roves (washers) on the inside. The strakes were fastened to internal frames with treenails (large wooden pegs)

The boys obviously had to have every measurement of the boat to make sure that Russ's was the correct proportions (which it is!) John has the ruler in hand and Russ is pointing out a particular feature!

What a find! and so real - much more so than when I saw the Mary Rose hull.

Photos copyright Russell Scott and Debbie Bamford

Washfastness

2009-05-05T17:34:00.000+02:00

Whatever happened to standards of workmanship? It is something that has been bothering me for quite a while and it seems to be getting worse - last year I went shopping for some new trousers. I discovered that most pairs made from dark materials carried a label saying "do not sit on light coloured sofas in this garment" That surely is not acceptable to the general public - well it must be I guess. The number of items that are bought that have really bright colours until their first wash is incredible, we should expect better!

I have a google search set to find blogs talking about natural dyes and yesterday there was a link to a blog describing how this lady had been knitting with yarn she had purchased, dyed with indigo (It is described as natural and a mid - blue colour) There was a photo of her fingers showing the staining she was getting as she was knitting up the yarn. It wasn't a complaint - it was almost as though this was the norm and accepted.

It made me think!

As far as I can see either the dyeing wasn't done properly - indigo even when you think you know how it works will come back and bite you, rub off can easily happen if the dyebath wasn't correctly prepared. Or it could be that the yarns weren't rinsed at all after the dyeing - this seems to be common practice now! I would be absolutely devastated to see that about my yarns on the net (and yes the lady named the yarn)

I am obviously getting on my high horse here, but someone has to start making a stand. Standards in the industry just don't seem to exist and if shoppers just buy the products and accept the poor quality it surely must be up to those of us with standards to prove you can get better?

When I dyed the silk for the blackwork for the V & A embroidery the first thing that Wendy did with the yarn was wash it in "hot soapy water" - to check that there was no bleeding of colour - there wasn't, she phoned me to tell me how impressed she was! I took it as a compliment at the time but looking back I see it as a sad indictment that she should expect there should be!

On the other hand how would you know in advance if something was going to bleed or not - do we go round all the yarn suppliers and rub the yarns in our hands to see if colour comes off, do we carry a little bag of soapy water to test out with? As far as I am aware there isn't a British Standard that you can comply with, and if it expected and accepted is it worth putting all the extra effort in?

Maybe I'm the oddity for expecting things to be done properly - I could probably save hours of work if I lower my standards - but I'm sorry I won't!!!

Spring in the valley

2009-05-02T21:39:00.000+02:00

We decided to take advantage of the sunshine today and went for a walk. We went up Lady Bagot's Drive, so called (by repute) because it is the back road up to Pool Park the N Wales home of Lord Bagot. It is said that Lady Bagot used to come down here to meet her lover........

How it actually got it's name is irrelevant really, but it is fab for a good walk. If you do the whole thing it is probably 6 or 7 miles, but you can change direction in various places so we took a slightly shorter route and probably did about 5 miles.

The start of the drive, off the main A525 is over the "Bridge over the river of blood" so named because a man died in the river during the Civil War. The walk takes us along the river Clewedog following it back upstream.

The water is really clear at the moment, there has been rain recently (so the track we walked on was quite muddy) but the river looked gorgeous! In fact it was so inviting that David decided to try it out!

When we first moved here the boys (Huh?!) and I used to come up the drive most days - sometimes with the ponies but frequently with a picnic and towels and they would have a play and splash in the river. There is a part that is channeled off and the water is deeper and still by the side of that channel - almost like a mini swimming pool, as we are all quite strong swimmers, it was never a problem, they never went without me though!

The wild flowers alongside the track were beautiful. I remember at school in the summer term we used to have a "wild flower" competition and had to collect and name as many as we could - stars being awarded for various numbers (I have a vague idea it being something like 25, 75, 125) I can still name a few, but most have slipped from the memory - I will dig out my book and look them up. The colours are so fantastic I've been inspired to do some reproduction work in the dyehouse! Perhaps I should name a colour collection after the flowers - I obviously won't use the flowers themselves to dye, it wouldn't get me very far, but the names, well they're romantic aren't they - and have an historic slant! A friend is often asking me to dye "Columbine" colour!

Talking of flowers my dye garden is coming along well! Here they are - my 2 Weld plants. Self seeded of course and could they have chosen a better place? I guess not! Have to be careful when we move the gas bottle now! Maybe it won't move for quite a while! This is just outside the dyehouse door, and I've no idea what is in the black rubbish bag - probably sawdust as it is also just outside John's workshop too! There is also masses of nettles and Lady's Bedstraw not far from here - but cultivated plants, not a chance!

End of the Red Dyes Workshop

2009-04-30T21:52:00.001+02:00

Today was the last day of the Red Dyes workshop, it's been running on the Online Guild for the whole of April, I have really enjoyed doing it and because it's all online you get written responses and photos of how people are getting on - so there is a record of it all, it's very rewarding!

The photo shows all the samples I have dyed during the workshop. On the far left is my madder (it's orange!) cochineal is in the centre on the right is sticklac and bottom left is brazilwood. There is a silk hankie in there (very hidden) that was painted with madder, lac and brazilwood extracts. The workshop has been good for me - it's made me look at some of my methods and try out new ideas. The kind of thing you don't have time for in the general run of being in the dyehouse. I am determined to get back to doing more research! (OK that's research and spinning I have to do more of - so what is going to lose out I wonder?!)

I have a lot of dyeing to be getting on with over the coming month - at the beginning of June there is the Ravelry Day - I have a stall and am running a workshop - and at the end of June is Woolfest. It's not the dyeing that takes up all the time it's the hanking up! It really seems to take forever, I have now got John looking on the web for any hanking machinery that we could use. It really is so time consuming when you can only do 1 hank at a time! To be fair John is fantastic at making things - I have a super ball winder for the linens, but he just hasn't had time to deal with the wools issue! I'll just have to plan to do so many hanks per day!

For once we are home for a Bank Holiday plus my sons are both coming home - so it'll be like Christmas!!! (wonder if I can get them hanking up?!) Hope the weather is better than it has been today! Nick I have to collect from Chester station tomorrow lunchtime (which means some retail therapy may be required in the morning whilst waiting!) David will drive himself up later in the day. I think this is going to be a nice weekend!

Spinning Again!

2009-04-28T22:37:00.000+02:00

Today has been a really fun day!

Trefriw Woolen Mills are having an Artisan's Market in December (first weekend) and I have been invited to have a stall there. Today was the photo shoot of products to make up posters and flyers for the event (Christmas will be coming very soon at this rate!) so Helen Melvin and I drove down with various items from our stock to make them famous! Anne Campbell works there on a Tuesday demonstrating spinning in the weavers cottage, so we took our wheels with us, just in case there was time for us to join in!

Many moons ago Anne taught me to spin so it was a delight to be able to sit down with her and spin away and natter, just like we used to when she ran Wern Mill and gave spinning lessons. In fact I think we totally lost track of time - Helen was told that she was an hour and a half late when she got home and John said to me " I know you said you'd be out all afternoon but I didn't think you meant you'd be this late!" Ah well - it was worth it. Thanks Anne and Helen, I had forgotten just how much I love spinning and how relaxing it is!

My wheel is a second hand Wee Peggy. I had one years ago and loved spinning on it, but then bought a Louet because I thought it would be better for production spinning (my business started because I produced hand spun naturally dyed embroidery silks for 17th century re enactors). In a fit of madness I sold my wheel to Montacute House for their in house spinning demonstrations and have regretted it ever since. When I had the chance to buy a replacement a couple of months ago I leapt at it, but this has been the first real opportunity I have had to play with it! Think there will be no stopping me again now though, it is just such a stress buster!

(I would at this point upload a photo, however this poxy computer is playing the "I don't want to do what you want to do" game at the moment and keeps telling me there is a fatal error everytime I go to the photos file - so I'll leave that bit til tomorrow! See how calm I am after spinning?!)

Stick to what you know!

2009-04-26T21:48:00.000+02:00

Well! To say we are disheartened by our trip to London would be an understatement! We arrived at Spitalfields Market on Wednesday morning at about 9am . No sign of any organisers - nor was there until about 9.40! We were shown to our market stall and left to sort ourselves out. Other people started arriving all around us and eventually by 11am everyone within the viscinity was set up! Sadly lots of the stalls were not what we expected! There was plenty of jewellery and there was plenty of cheap imported fashion. (There was 1 stall close by which we actually liked - a lady called Lizzy making beautifully tailored waterproof raincoats, not cheap but very stylish!) however the majority of clothing stalls were not good!

What we saw of the fashion show looked fun - college students with briefs that they took to extremes, but from our point of view the effort had been pointless. We went back on Thursday and the day was no better, one of the stallholders was so upset that she started a petition to hand in to the organisers saying how disappointed we all were with the standards, we didn't bother going on the Friday so don't actually know how she got on! I have never walked away like that before, hope I never have to do it again, but the event was just so not what it was supposed to be!

Anyway onwards and upwards!! The weather has been so fine that we have actually attacked our garden - the grass has been cut and the apple blossom is fabulous - I wish I was artistic enough to create a picture of the apple trees this year they are so laden with flowers! Wonder if we'll be here to collect the fruit?!

The online guild dyeing workshop will come to a close this week - so we are doing the final dye, Brazilwood. I'll be in the dyehouse tomorrow sorting the last photos out for that and putting the instructions up. I have thoroughly enjoyed leading this workshop, it's made me go back and look at things I take for granted in my dyeing. Now of course I have to collate all the questionaires and put up a chart of results! That will probably be more work than all the rest put together!

Madder dyeing

2009-04-21T00:41:00.000+02:00

It has been so gorgeous over the last few days, it's been a real inspiration to go out and get on with the cloth dyeing I needed to do. Between orders and the material I wanted dyed for this week in London (Alternative Fashion Week) it amounted to almost 30m of cloth to be dyed in madder! All done in 1 day too! Actually once you get into the flow it's not too bad, the hardest part is the weight of the cloth (particularly wool) when wet!

Here's one of the pieces of woolen cloth for the Weald and Downland Museum hanging on the line after coming out of the bath. The colour wasn't quite as dark as I'd hoped - but the base colour of the wool was grey.

I've also done lots of samples of the dye colours onto wensleydale fleece curls - trying to get a good range of repeatable colours. I have this idea that little curls can be used as samples for swatches if someone wants to take one away! This sample is of brazilwood - isn't it lush looking. Such a shame that this dye isn't lightfast, I think I'd use it lots more if it was, the crimson tones appeal to me far more than any other reds. The sample is dyed with Living Colour extract, half a teaspoon gives this depth of colour and there's plenty left in the exhaust too!

I probably won't get chance to update my blog for the rest of the week, but I'll report in on the lastest fashions when I get back!!! Must remember to pack my camera!

Easter Weekend

2009-04-16T23:46:00.000+02:00

It seems ages since we actually got home from Llancaiach Fawr, it's really only 2 days, but I came home with a lurgy and it's knocked me for six as the saying goes! I guess you could say it's our own fault for going away and camping over the Easter weekend, but we were together with the rest of Sir John Myddleton's Companie - Medieval Merchants!

This was our tent - and my workstation, I was doing the cooking - not my normal role, I am usually a medieval dyer, but as no one else was able to cook I said I'd take it on!! Huh didn't realize quite how hard it is being responsible for a fire and keeping it at the correct temperature to boil water!!! Never again!!! Well til the next time I suppose!

The weather was it's usual self for a Bank Holiday weekend, glorious sunshine during the day, freezing cold at night (colder than I've camped in before, my nose was so cold in the middle of the night!!!!!) The two photos were taken at about 8am on the Sunday morning - you can just see the frost still on the ground, but vanishing in the beautiful sunlight! The ultimate was the rain when we were packing the tents away - and the sun came out when we got in the car to drive away!

John was being a pinner over the weekend, he always attracts an audience and the pins and needles that he makes are fantastic, handmade from brass he work hardens the ends and files them to a very fine point and then either puts a 2 turn pinhead on or carefully makes an eye so that there is no burring. Unbeatable!

Purple Jazz

2009-04-08T18:57:00.000+02:00

My delivery has arrived from Eathues! In it was their new extract Purple Jazz. This is a new Logwood extract that they consider "so brilliant and snazzy the called it Purple Jazz". So of course I had to try some straight away! Here's my results, I love the purple on the silk yarn, the wool is more of a cochineal purple, maybe needs a bit more work - I did my usual and just put half a teaspoon in 50ml boiling water, mixed it up and immersed the fibre. Perhaps not fair. I DO like the silk though, that is Jazzy! It will be on sale in the online shop just as soon as I can get it bagged up and listed! If you're interested in trying it you can always give me a call!

Another package also arrived today - lots of lovely ethically produced silk cloth, I want to dye it up in time for the Alternative Fashion week starting on the 20th April at Spitalfields Traders Market. We've taken a stall there, so hope to see lots of interested people attending the fashion shows! These silks have come from India and are woven from handspun yarns. The wild and semi wild moths are not stifled but live out their lives and escape from the cocoons so the silk has to be spun, not reeled. I can't get away from the carbon footprint of bringing it in from India, but at least it is ethically produced!

I have to say I can't wait to get started on it - it feels lovely and I want to make some clothes out of it - there are 6 different weaves of varying qualities.

More bugs

2009-04-06T00:57:00.000+02:00

Today has been hectic, the sunshine was lovely and inspired us to clean up the Saab, this is my father's car and needs to be sold - it's surplus to requirements as they say, so we took lots of lovely photos of it and will now do something about advertising it - not sure where's best though!

The cloth dyehouse was cleared out of junk ready for major dyeing week ahead - 15 metres of woolen cloth for the Weald and Downland musem plus hangings for our period tent plus getting ready for the Alternative Fashion week, Spitalfields, London - we have jumped in and decided to have a stall there!

I also played with the cochineal and sticklac some more. These dyes are so interesting, I thought I'd got lots of colour out of the bugs the other day, but found that I got almost a fresh dyepot from re- soaking them again today. I did crush up the cochineal which seemed to produce a new colour almost.

This is the sticklac exhaust before I added anything in - looks almost colourless, wouldn't believe I could get anything else from the bath.

But with some more boiling water onto the gloop as I call it the colour came out again. Not as strong as before, but certainly good enough to dye more fibres!

This is the fibres in the pan, just before I took them out to rinse them.

Pretty fibres

2009-04-01T02:17:00.000+02:00

As promised here are a couple of pictures from todays dyeing. The results I have to say I am very pleased with - a lovely scarlet colour from the cochineal and a more crimson colour from the sticklac.

The recipes were quite straightforward really, I enjoyed them - the sticklac was really good, although I weighed out the 50g I obviously have much less a pecentage of red dyestuff to the amount of shellac left behind. Gosta Sandberg in his book The Red Dyes says that there is approximately 6% red colouring in sticklac as opposed to the amount you have if you use the already extracted powder - but I don't think that is really telling me what percentage dye I am actually using!

The cochineal we already know gives a very high yield of colour, for this recipe I used 13% dyestuff to the weight of fibres, normally I only use about 10%.

Now what colours shall I do tomorrow?

2009-03-31T12:27:00.000+02:00

Have missed a couple of days - I was supposed to be slaving away in the dyehouse on Sunday, but it was so gorgeous we decided to go out for a drive again! Well you've got to take advantage of the weather! We met up with some friends for lunch at the http://www.myttonandmermaid.co.uk/ The food is fantastic, have so far had 3 meals there and enjoyed every one of them so much we're recommending it to anyone we can!!! Not to mention the beautiful setting! The church just behind the hotel is full of characteer with a stained glass window from the 16th century, when it's fine you can sit out in the garden by the banks of the Severn and look at the old bridge, with the swans floating away down the river it's so peaceful the tranquility takes you over!

However that was then and now we're back to work! Yesterday I prepared my cochineal and sticklac for the workshop - today I'm doing the dyeing, normally I would do all this preparation way in advance, but I want to do the workshop with everyone, so everything is fresh to answer the questions.

The sticklac was very gloopy - but lots of red colour came out - in fact more than I expected from the books I've been reading! This was right at the start - a very rich colour is developing, I'm using 50g sticklac and will attempt to dye 50g fibres with it. I had to add boiling water many times to get to a point where it appeared no more colour was coming out of the gloop! It all went into a pan ready to add water and proceed with the dyeing - which is happening at the moment! I'll add some more pictures later - I'd better go and check what's happening down there!

Health and Fitness

2009-03-27T20:53:00.000+01:00

I have always thought of myself as a very healthy person - and reasonably fit, although recently I have gained some of the "middle aged spread" and definitely feel my age after a day in the dyehouse carrying heavy pans and buckets of liquid around. I decided in February that I really need to do something about it - I don't feel right! Not that long ago I would have gone for a walk round the "big block" ie 5 miles, without batting an eyelid, now the "little block" of 2 miles can seem daunting (well OK the winter weather hasn't helped.... but you get the picture!) So I decided to join the gym in Denbigh. Great, but then you have to fit it into the day - if I go at 7.30 in the morning it's reasonable, if I go at 2.30 in the afternoon it's reasonable at any other time I've tried it's hectic!!! 7.30 doesn't allow me to go to the Post Office and do other jobs, so 2.30 makes more sense, but on a dyeing day you can't just walk away from the pots!!! What this means is I'm not getting into a routine and I really want to!

I had news recently of a fellow natural dyer who is seriously ill with bladder cancer - the prognosis does not sound good at all, I am truly sorry to hear that and wish her all the best, but it's made me realize that we are not immune to what we do and I need to keep myself healthy and take precautions with all the different chemicals that "natural dyes" require! There is some speculation I understand as to whether what she has done as an occupation may have been a cause. That is a very scary thought!

One thing I am careful about is using rubber gloves, but sometimes putting the dust mask on can seem un-necessary and I'll skip it - then when my nose starts running I regret it. From now on I'm not going to do any "skipping" with health and safety!

When I write dyeing instructions I always start with the "Serious bit" it is something I am aware of and try to emphasise, but I think what has struck me most is that these things creep up on you - I would have pooh-poohed someone telling me I'd think twice about walking the "big block", but I can talk myself out of it very easily now! I hope that anyone taking up natural dyeing as a hobby will always bear in mind that these products are not play things - even though they come from natural sources. Chemicals are chemicals whatever their source, some are more harmful than others, but all should be treated with respect.

This seems quite a heavy post - for that I'm sorry, but the news was not nice.............

Bugs

2009-03-26T00:33:00.000+01:00

Next month (April) I am running a workshop for the Online Guild of spinners weavers and dyers - on the red dyes. I called my workshop Roots, Woods and Bugs because I'm going to cover dyeing with Brazilwood, Madder and Cochineal, with some Lac thrown in! Consequently I've had all my old text books out reading back over long forgotten things - I feel it's so important to go back and check out what you do as second nature in your own dyehouse, it may work for you because you've developed your own technique, but it's still important to go back to basics as it were.

I'm probably going to start with the bugs bit - well that's what I've been working on today! Sticklac as the basic dyestuff I've never tried to use, so I'm getting myself organised to start with that one - I have it in all it's forms, sticklac, shellac, lac powder and lac extract, reading all the different recipes has been really fascinating, on Friday I'll actually try and get some results!

The first thing I have to do with this lot is to grind it up in boiling water with a pestle and mortar - this will soften the resin (shellac) and allow the red colour to dissolve. I may well cheat and just use the lac powder I've got - it saves on all the grinding! No I won't really, if a jobs worth doing, it's worth doing properly!

It's interesting stuff isn't it - you can see the twigs that the bugs have settled on and then the gloup that they've covered themselves in for protection. It wasn't understood in the past whether the secretion came from the bugs or the tree - a sap like gloup that was given off because of the bugs biting into it. It would appear the secretion comes from the bugs after they have bitten into the tree and ingested the sap. Isn't nature amazing!

A new Dyehouse!

2009-03-24T22:15:00.000+01:00

The big news today is - my new dyehouse arrived!!!

This was the lorry just backing in!! I am so excited! Problem is I don't know when I'll have it erected - or where! As you can see it's a flatpack dyehouse, when we started unloading we realized not only is it flatpack it's a jigsaw puzzle as well - there are no instructions!

There are now piles of wood all over the yard waiting to be moved under cover - and of course the weather has changed tonight and it's raining outside! John was looking on the internet a few weeks ago and spotted these wonderful wooden buildings, as we need to be able to dye cloth using the historical methods we've developed here, it was decided that one of these would be perfect to help us in our house hunting!

It is being stored under the hay bay for now......................

Maybe I should explain a little! We have reached the point where we realize that N Wales is a long way from anywhere, added to that we rent our property so can't make it "ours" which affects lots of aspects of what we do. We have actually been house hunting for about 12 months and driving our friends mad with indecision, but we know that we now have to do something positive!

Of course we haven't yet reached a decision, because we have to agree on where we want to live and what type of property we want and it has to fit into our price bracket and ......... no wonder everyone is frustrated with us!!!

For now I'll just dream of when I can start my dyeing in my own place and tomorrow I'll go back into the dyehouse I have and start preparing for the month long workshop I'm doing in April!

2009-03-09T17:33:00.000+01:00

I can tell this is going to be hard for me to keep up with - but I really want to make it work, so bear with me!!!

We went to the Kent Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers for the weekend of the month change - it was a lovely weekend, and we were made so welcome! I dressed in Medieval kit on the Saturday and did a talk on the life oand clothes of the Medieval Dyer, then on the Sunday we went modern an ran a workshop on dyeing with extract dyes. Everyone went home with lots of colour samples and very happy! I wish I had time to take photos when doing workshops - it's so great to see what everyone produces, especially when working with the same basic material - everyone is different!!

Last week was a whirl of getting stock dyed for the big market coming up this weekend and getting ready for working in Castleford. I was doing calligraphy for the first time as a demonstration so had to do some research and get things ready! It all went well thank goodness - again no pictures, maybe I'll be able to find some on the Wakefield website at some point!

Now it's seriously getting into the market time - have dyed lots and lots of linen yarn and beautiful embroidery wools, I'm really pleased with the mix of colours I've achieved. I have some particularly good greens, a relief as it's such a popular colour! I must go and take some photos! Helen wants some photos of greens as well, so I have to!

Vixy

2009-02-26T01:56:00.000+01:00

Missed a few days already - and I will be away from tomorrow til Sunday, so I'll miss a few more, but I'm here now!!!

The weather has been reasonable over the past few days, so we decided it was time to take Vixy out for a spin, this I suppose would be what is considered our hobby now - we're a bit petrol-heady!!!

This is Vixy - isn't she pretty? She's a Vauxhall VX220 turbo, great fun!!! We went up to the Horseshoe Pass and into Llangollen, then back home along the A5 and across the moors. I tried to take some photos as we were travelling :

This was Valle Crusis Abbey as we wizzed by!!!!

Since then I've been busy in the dye house, getting ready for the workshop I'm running this weekend down at Kent Guild of WSD - we're doing the extract dyes, which should be great fun, I've been getting some really intense colours from immersion dyeing with the extracts - I've always found them a bit insipid in the past, but the colours over the last couple of days have been fabulous. I'll post a picture when I get back!

Snowdrops

2009-02-20T00:22:00.000+01:00

The garden is full of snowdrops! They're everywhere! This is the view of them under the apple trees - aren't they lovely?

I always think they bring lightness and cheer to the gloomy wintertime when they are out.

My aunt tells this story about my father - it was really snowy and icy the day she was born in early February. My father came home from school for his lunch and Grannie said he could go out to play but he mustn't go onto the frozen pond - he did and of course fell in!! Grannie went to the rescue, dried him off and sent him back to school with a flea in his ear - and then produced my Aunt about 20 minutes later! The neighbour who came to help brought snowdrops in for Grannie, so every year on her birthday my Aunt was given snowdrops by her mother.

Sadly she has no snowdrops growing round her house so when I saw her on her birthday I promised to send some photos!

I had to include this photo because Blarty is in it - he's my 10 year old Wensleydale/ Welsh cross. I use his fleece for naturally dyed colour samples and just to fill my basket with lusciousness! Surprisingly there are no birds at the feeders - they are so tame now that they normally just queue on the fence waiting for me to finish!

I have had a not very productive day although I did get out to collect lots of lovely sock wool for the first month of the Dye Club and managed to clear up the dyehouse a little!

The Dye Club

2009-02-18T18:07:00.000+01:00

I'm very excited today! I have been planning The Dye Club since before Christmas - trying to work out how to do it, what's the best things to go in it, how to arrange the lessons as it were, and today I've started to make it public! I've put a section on the online shop http://www.tmdevents.co.uk/index.php?cPath=51&osCsid=558c99d64c77ddada2a6849d67a34083 (hmm that looks bad - note to self, learn how to do links properly!) What I need to do is go and take some photos - but what do I take a photo of, and then how do I make the picture a useable size? I had though of some fibres with some natural dyes spread around - but it seems a bit twee somehow!I wish I wasn't such a technophobe!!!! Oh and I'm putting it here and I might even put it on Ravelry!

Talking about photos I am going to go out in the morning and take some of the snowdrops around the house - there are so many it's like walking on a white carpet! They're just right at the moment - will start to turn very soon!

I haven't managed to get into the dyehouse yet - but John has been and cut out a medieval overgown ready for me to sew. It's a pure wool cloth (from Whaley's) dyed with Madder. Think I'll line it with undyed linen - mainly because it's a heavy weight cloth so it needs a lightweight lining! There is a link you have to go through the dyehouse and upstairs to get to the workroom! The madder on this piece of cloth is very orange - I used the exhaust from some red pieces I'd done, there is always lots of colour left, it just might not react in the way you want it to!

Natural Dyes and me!

2009-02-17T18:54:00.001+01:00

Natural dyes are my life! My work, my leisure, my reading, my visiting, everything revolves around dyeing and its history in some way.

I thought it time I started sharing with others my passion, it's quite hard to understand sometimes why people walk past the stall and go "I can buy that cheaper at the market" No they can't - at the market it won't have been lovingly hand dyed with natural dyes. Hours spent preparing the fibre, preparing the dyestuff and then putting the two together to come up with beautiful colours that ALL tone together, no matter what they are!!!

The hanks on the line in the picture have been dyed with woad (blue), weld (yellow) and madder (red). The three principle dyes throughout history. A full colour palate can be produced with just these three dyes, but there are also lots of others to add in, so we'll get to those in due time!

It's the time of year where I try out new things and spend as much time in the dyehouse as I can - sometimes it's just hanking up, but lots of work goes on in there, ready for the season starting at Easter.

I'm going to try and keep up the blog, please excuse me if I miss sometimes - we work away lots, but I'll try and let you know where I am and when, so maybe you can come and say "Hello" it we're nearby!